&gt;&gt; “Humanity is about to face perhaps its greatest challenge ever, which is finding
meaning in life after the end of ‘in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat
bread’,” he said. “We need to rise to the occasion and meet this challenge.”<p>In the past that wasn&#x27;t a problem. I&#x27;m thinking of classical Greece where the
majority of the work was done by slaves and free citizens were, well, free, to
better themselves. The result was an unprecedented flourishing of the arts,
science and philosophy and basically the birth of the western civilisation. In
later periods, the Rennaissance, the Industrial era and so on, there was also
great progress in the sciences and also in political philosophy, and this was
achieved by people who didn&#x27;t have to labour in the fields for a living.<p>So there should be no question that humanity is indeed able to better itself
once it&#x27;s relieved by the need to toil everyday to sustain itself.<p>The real question is: will increased automation really mean a high enough
standard of living for everyone? So far, automation just means that the work
that is done by humans is less fulfilling, rather than more: macjobs, call
centers, warehouse work, retail... hardly intellectually rewarding work.
Instead, that kind of work crushes your spirit and leaves you no time or energy
to pursue your interests and educate yourself or even exercise your body to
improve your health.<p>I do believe there is cause for concern. My concern is that in the future, the
majority of work will be menial, meaningless, unproductive tasks where the human
worker is just a cog in a huge automated machine of which he or she has no
control. I fear we&#x27;ll just become a lesser, less well paid kind of mindless
drone, alongside our wonderful machines.<p>And as to those machines I think the big risk is not that automation will become
better than humans at doing jobs. The real risk is that automation will reach a
mediocre level, even possibly a very low level of competence, but it will be
employed anyway because of its competitive pricing.<p>In other words, I see it as very plausible that even today&#x27;s experts will be
slowly replaced by incompetent, inexpert machines that will do the work that
humans do today, for much less money and at a much lower standard.<p>If we&#x27;re ever so dumb as to hand over our future to our machines, at least the
ones we have now, the end result will be misery and unhappiness for all.