Ray Kurzweil has argued against concerns about automation creating unemployment by pointing out that, at the turn of the 20th century, workers simply couldn't have imagined the jobs in IT administration, software development, and web design, that we're all doing now instead of raising crops (except for those of us who work at Walmart. But let's humor him for the time being). So we shouldn't worry about what jobs we'll do in the future as existing ones are claimed by automation (a claim he doesn't dispute). We just haven't invented them yet - but we will!

The predictive-event-horizon singularity to the rescue! We can't imagine the jobs we'll be doing in the future, and they were there when we couldn't imagine them before, THEREFORE they must be there now! Ignorance is bliss. Yeah. Some answer. Make your reputation as a futurist by pushing all kinds of predictions, and then use ignorance to justify your predictions when convenient. Brilliant.

Aside from that however, have you ever seen a cow driving a tractor, never mind pulling a plow? Because that's the equivalent of what you're saying when you continuously insist that humans will never be economically obsolete.

That's not an economy. It's a Gary Larsen cartoon:

Comments –Nato