No profession can survive or outperform AI
Whatever your profession is – teaching, engineering, medicine, law, etc – it may not be safe – it can be automated, done by an algorithm, robots or computers much better in the future. Dr Yuval Noah Harari, the author of Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (a must speed-read) explains how revolutions in technology and society will transform not only our bodies and minds but also our work. If you’re a student, watch Harari’s talk which charts what might happen to your chosen profession in not distant future.
In the age of automation and AI, two most important skills are how to adapt and learning to learn (and speed reading), as you don’t know if your job/a portfolio career/vocation is going to be made redundant next year.
Most doctors will be out of work
Yuval Noah Harari gives a very good example of how most doctors will be out of work in the future because AI will do their jobs much better ie will diagnose illnesses better and offer better treatments and cures – cheaper, with 24/7 access anywhere in the world. There are companies who will build a medical device (called the “Tricorder” from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, your blood sample and you breath into it.
Don’t study law
And AI is already working well. For example, in the US, young lawyers already don’t get jobs, because of IBM Watson, you can get legal advice (so far for more or less basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. Ebay’s 40 000/day disputes are resolved by an algorithm only – no humans are involved. So if you study law, stop immediately because there will be 90% fewer lawyers in the future, only specialists will remain.
On the rise of the machines
“In the past there were many things only humans could do. But now robots and computers are catching up, and may soon outperform humans in most tasks. True, computers function very differently from humans, and it seems unlikely that computers will become human-like any time soon…. However, we are on the brink of a momentous revolution. Humans are in danger of losing their economic value because intelligence is decoupling from consciousness.”
On terrorism
“Terrorists are like a fly that tries to destroy a china shop. The fly is so weak that it cannot budge even a single teacup. So it finds a bull, gets inside its ear and starts buzzing. The bull goes wild with fear and anger and destroys the china shop. This is what happened in the Middle East in the past decade. Islamic fundamentalists could never have toppled Saddam Hussein by themselves. Instead they enraged the US by the 9/11 attacks, and the US destroyed the Middle Eastern china shop for them.”
On sugar
“In 2012 about 56 million people died throughout the world; 620,000 of them died due to human violence… In contrast, 800,000 committed suicide and 1.5 million died of diabetes. Sugar is more dangerous than gunpowder.”
Learn how to learn fast – speed reading is the first skill
Yuval Noah Harari has some advice to all the kids that are starting schooling: learn how to learn, or better still learn how to learn fast, or accelerated learning (speed reading is part of accelerated learning) because whatever you’re learning now is not going to be relevant in the next 5 to 10 to 20 years and you’ll have to reinvent yourself all the time – even at the age of 90 or more. Also become comfortable with uncertainty – the next decades will be characterised by uncertainty.
Before you want to speed read Homo Deus A Brief History of Tomorrow by Dr Yuval Noah Harari – watch this video that summarises the key concepts of Home Deus
To reinvent your job/career/vocation start with this ebook A Joosr Guide to… The $100 Start-Up by Chris Guillebeau: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future
or Side Hustle: Build a side business and make extra money – without quitting your day job