Sometimes, I lay awake at night thinking of what the future holds. We have the following challenges: exploding population, escalating food prices, global warming, escalating oil prices, rising sea levels, lack of clean drinking water.
Perhaps one factor that has been ignored is the future of labour markets. Robotics are getting more advanced. In future, all repetitive jobs will be done by robots. In 10 - 20 years, more complex tasks can be done by robots too. When we order food from McDonalds in 10 years' time, a robotic kiosk could be serving us. The staff cooking our burgers could be robots. The ones clearing our tables could be roving robots. THe only humans who are working will probably be programmers, mechanical engineers and a manager just to make sure things are ok.
What will happen to us humans? Surgeries will be conducted by robots. Human doctors merely steer mechanical hands. Unemployment will sky rocket. Company profits will sky rocket. But who will have a salary to buy those goods? In 10 years time, the divide between the highly skilled and the redundant will be very wide. Perhaps through taxes, the government will have to give handouts to its citizens, who in turn become customers. It is a very fuzzy future.
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