Thursday, June 15, 2017

"Humans today, are the equivalent of extinct working horses of late 19th – early 20th centuries"

David Keohane commends to our attention Macquarie's musings on what historian Yuval Noah Harari has been calling the rise of the 'useless class'.

From FT Alphaville:

Dystopian trading amid the eroding value of the ‘salt of the earth’
Jeez Macquarie, tell us what you really think:
Although economists argue that as in the First and Second Industrial revolutions, new jobs would be created (and undoubtedly this is true), at least initially the new jobs are not much more than ‘warehousing’ labour pending their final disposal in some form. Also, this time around, degree of disruption is far more profound than in previous cycles. Technology is creating a world of almost no scarcity, unlimited scalability and where value of conventional labour inputs is rapidly eroding. Essentially, AI is replacing IQ while automation and robotics are replacing ‘muscle power’. This places a great deal of value on EQ and ability to think ‘outside of the box’. However, as Maslow as well as Myers Briggs (MB) framework and other studies showed, most people (70%-80%) are what MB calls ‘sensing’ individuals (or in other words, people who tend to follow procedures and respect orders, authority and hierarchy)....MORE