Why being made redundant by AI could be the best thing ever for you

When the world changes — what’s good for you changes too

When the world changes — what’s good for you changes too

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Ok, let’s get straight to the point…

How could one of the most distressing things, losing your job, be good?

Are you losing your mind!? You could well ask.

I get you, honestly.

I didn’t come to this idea easily.

But a clue as to my thinking is in the sub-title, the world is radically changing in many ways.

Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash

And AI is not the only radical change that’s been going on in the world.

Some of these other changes are not well reported by the media.

I’m not talking about fringe theories or speculations.

I’m talking about undisputed facts reported by governments and NGOs’s, that for some reason are not well reported by the media.

Some of these new facts could change how you think about AI and work, and could radically change what you might think would be the best thing ever for you…

Why being made redundant by AI is the worst thing ever

Let’s first do a quick recap of the obvious.

Being made redundant is of course terrible because in almost all societies you need a job to provide an income, without which life is difficult.

It’s not only about money, a job provides you with purpose, social status, structure and meaning in your life.

What’s even worse about being made redundant by AI, is this is not like previous revolutions.

Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

In previous revolutions, such as the Industrial Revolution, we lost jobs in farming and agriculture, but these were replaced by new jobs in factories.

In the AI revolution, AI can do more and more types of work that are highly skilled, and it’s not clear what new jobs if any will be created that AI cannot do.

With the AI revolution in work, we are facing the real risk that a large majority of the population will be unemployed with no new jobs available for them.

As historian & author Yuval Harari puts it, the majority of the population could become what he calls ‘The useless class’:

The credibility of this risk has been supported by many AI leaders such as Mustafa Suleyman (co-founder of Google Deepmind), Sam Altman (OpenAI), Elon Musk (Tesla) and Kai-Fu Lee (ex-head of Google China).

But what else has been changing in the world that might also change how we think about this?

When the world changes…

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