There is only one problem with the presumption that services, high- or low-skilled, will provide jobs where industry and agriculture no longer will. It turns out that any repetitive endeavour – whatever the industry – can be automated within the context of rising digitisation. Just as we reached ‘peak horse ’ a century ago, as one paradigm came up against another, within a generation we are set for peak human.
Rise of the Robots
In 1997 IBM’s Deep Blue defeated grandmaster Garry Kasparov over a series of chess matches, becoming the first computer to do so. While that was an iconic moment in the unfolding story of humans and machines, it paled in comparison to Watson, also built by IBM, when it later defeated Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter – two of the greatest Jeopardy! players in the history of the TV quiz show. Chess is a uniquely challenging game, but Jeopardy!, which demands real-time pattern recognition and creative thinking, more closely resembles the features associated with distinctively human intelligence.
Not long after, Ken Jennings neatly summed up what that defeat might mean for white-collar work – which values pattern recognition and creative thinking – over the coming decades.
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