Think Unemployment Is Bad Now? By 2045 Everyone Will Be Out Of Work!

It's everybody's dream: not having to work!

It's everybody's nightmare: 100% unemployment!

Moshe Vardi, a computer science professor at Rice University, believes that by 2045 this dream/nightmare scenario might come to pass. He thinks that artificially intelligent machines may be capable of  doing all our jobs. He says, “if not any work that humans can do, then, at least, a very significant fraction of the work that humans can do.”

As a child growing up in the '60s, a future where automation relieved humans of the burden or work was viewed as a positive thing. Then as time passed, it became obvious that the benefits of such a utopia would not be spread around evenly. The robot owners could relax. The replaced workers could starve.

As we move towards an economic singularity such as a world without work, we must ask ourselves, "How do we spread the benefits around more equitably?"