When the creators of a new technology warn that it could destroy the primary engine of global growth of the past half a century, it’s worth paying attention

Warning signs are flashing from experts, entrepreneurs and workers concerned that automation is coming for a wide range of information-oriented jobs. What ordinarily would be just another boom-bust cycle fuelled by computer-generated efficiency, a typewriter to keyboard type of evolution, is this time threatening to overturn the basic social contract between employers and employees.

Unless and until this is taken seriously by policymakers, the modern middle class risks becoming a relic of simpler, more equitable times.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said during an interview with 60 Minutes that artificial intelligence could “wipe out half of all entry-level white collar jobs and spike unemployment to 10-15 per cent”. His concerns are not misplaced. Early artificial intelligence (AI) pioneer and Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton has said AI will replace “mundane” intellectual work, which he equated to white collar jobs.

When the creators of a new technology warn about its potential to destroy the primary engine of global growth of the past half-century, it’s worth paying attention.

We are at another transition in the world of work, one where the designers of AI promise to replace not just physical labour through robotics but our thinking work as well. That has tremendous ramifications for what humans will do for employment and whether........

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