Technologist, inventor and founder Amber Case is decidedly an optimist in an era of artificial intelligence, automation, and smart robots. Especially when millionaire Silicon Valley nerds are buying citizenship in New Zealand and building end-of-civilization compounds in the back woods of America’s Pacific Northwest.
“Within 30 years, half of humanity won’t have a job,” former Facebook executive Antonio Martinez recently said.
The results will not be pretty, Martinez thinks, adding that “there could be a revolution” after technologists invent intelligent machines that build products, transport them without human intervention, and automate much of what we currently pay people to do, like building houses. In preparation for civil unrest, he’s building that compound in a forest and stocking it with supplies in anticipation.
The new horror, apparently, is not the zombie apocalypse. It’s the job apocalypse.
Case, on the other hand, is much less optimistic about technology, and much more optimistic about people.
Get the full story in my post at the University of Waterloo …