Playing around with this drone really gets me thinking – humans are screwed! Seriously – I am looking at the delivery guys on their electric bikes and thinking they will be replaced with a drone in the near future. Food delivery too.
Its an exciting time, and I really wonder what the mass majority of people will do when they are replaced by drones and AI. From my reading around on the internet, seems like the most acceptable answer I can see is more intimate teaching and training environments. Think of a classroom of, I’m not sure – 10 students and 1 teacher? Having technology also helping with a robot and a screen showing how things work, and the teacher making sure everyone is following along ok and answering questions as they come.
It will be all about the personal touch, the experience. Anything that is scalable now, is automated. There will be massive companies that control all of that scale – i.e. Massive markets like Amazon, Taobao, App Marketplaces. Our jobs will be to be personal, which is something that a robot cannot replace – at least I can’t see that happening for the foreseeable future.
So what does that mean to you? Well, look at your current job or career. Are you doing repetitive work that can soon be replaced by a robot or AI? If you are, don’t get angry and be a protectionist. Instead, start to invest your time LEARNING a new field. Be a creator. Be an “experience provider”. Heck, this is what I am all in on as you can see – making content and making events (experiences). I don’t think these will be easily replaceable by the coming wave of technology, so I am putting my energy here.
We all only have so many hours in the day. I remember working on Wall Street thinking that so many of those jobs would be replaced by machines – and it is happening. Heck, it is computers fighting each other in algorithms. Do you think the owners of the Wall Street firms care about their employees? Heck no! Those sharks are cut throat and outsourcing jobs to India as fast as they could – when they can automate you with a formula or drone robot – they will.
Invest in creativity. Invest in helping people and being a personality.
I see a world where we don’t do any manual work. We live in a home where food is cooked for us, goods are automatically delivered. We walk out our door and a car pulls up and we sit inside. The car has no driver, and its more like an office room. We pop up a screen (not sure exactly how the screen will look, maybe just projected on the wall of the car) and can check messages and talk to our team members. Basically, always plugged in, and our main job will be communicating to other people. Sharing information, sharing our perspective. Building and fostering communities of people with similar interests.
The big brother part is the most scary though. All this automation and AI will be in the cloud, and governments will be tapping into that data. Sure, some of it will be good – so that they can make the highways more efficient and focus their attention on certain districts of a city for crime and road improvements – but, I think we can also think of the negative side effects of anyone able to know where you are, where you are going, where you have been, what you have eaten, what you want to buy, where you invest your money, etc.
And now you are probably resisting what I am saying. You’re saying – no way I’ll put all my information online so that governments can read it. Well, too late- you kind of already have. Even if you don’t think so – your banks, your real estate companies, your e-commerce transactions, are all there. But this will be a whole new level once we don’t use cash or untracked cars for everything.
While we – the “old people” will resist this – our kids will call us weird old people and say “everyone is doing it, come on don’t be such a stickler”. They will gladly upload their live on the internet and enjoy the benefits that come with it.
I’m not sure the answer – but I am confident this automated life is coming. Being aware is probably the most important part. Knowing that the information you share online is not private. So many of my friends think their Wechat messages are private, or their emails are secure. No way- all of this can be read by tons of people, and will not be deleted even if you format your mobile phone or laptop.
Welcome to the future, the future is now. And this little drone is cool – but I know soon enough he’ll be following me around and live streaming my video blog for me – automatically. I’m all in on it, are you?