AI (Artificial Intelligence) is making good progress and we have seen computers doing very well at strategy games like Chess and Go.
AI is ideal for situations where a large quantity of data has to be processed as the basis of a ‘logical’ decision. This applies in strategy games, and in commercial activities such as stock and commodity trading.
So computers can play chess. But they can’t easily pick up the chess pieces. They are much less adept physically than ‘mentally’.
This means that as the next generation of schoolkids start to look for jobs, a number of what are currently high paid jobs might be being performed by computers.
Those kids should look to become plumbers, gardeners or carpenters – working physically and flexibly.
Will this result in a redistribution of wealth from knowledge workers to manual workers? That remains to be seen. But the manual workers might have work – and feel engaged and rewarded by that work.