Photo by Lenin Estrada on Unsplash

Okay so, you don’t have a degree in Engineering, and programming is essentially learning a language that is mostly composed of math. Maybe you don’t actually work on a conveyer belt, but you’re also not one of the people who’s going to be in charge of a sophisticated network of robots. You’re not alone. Self-driving cars and drones that bring you food might sound super cool, but where exactly do you fit into this future?

There has never been a better time — or rather, more important time to start thinking way outside the box, and really embracing your creativity.

37% of workers are worried about losing their jobs directly because of automation. PricewaterhouseCoopers

For now, when people think about ‘Robots are gonna take all the jobs!’, we tend to think of assembly lines, cameras that do quality control instead of people, fighter jets with no pilots, and taxis where you don’t have to talk to your driver. This isn’t exactly the case however. At some point, if somebody has to pay you money to do something, they’re going to look for a cheaper way to get it done, and if somebody is looking for a cheaper way to get something done, someone else is going to automate it. So on and so forth until it climbs right back up the ladder and you’re out of a job.

Let’s say you’re a crane operator. You did your certifications, you did your apprenticeship, you dealt with shitty bosses, you put in the work. 10 years later and you’re one of the most badass crane operators out there. You make a great salary and you’re comfortable having your third child. One day, the lead Engineer and a few other people you’ve never seen before come into the break trailer on site and tell you this is going to be the last project you’re working for the company.

You go home, you don’t tell your family about it just yet — no, you’re going to look for another job with a higher salary, get it, then tell them as though this was your decision to begin with. But there are no other crane operator jobs, like none at all. At this point you’re thinking ‘what the fuck?’ and frantically Googling what is happening in your very specific niche industry. There you see it, articles upon articles, about how some company with a bullshit name like Crane-ify just raised $80 million in investment, but it’s already their third round of funding, and the investment isn’t for R&D, but for expansion into international markets. They’re already here, they’ve already taken your job, and their website says they crane faster, better, safer, and most importantly cheaper than any human operator ever could. What on earth are you supposed to do now?

In the above scenario, the job, the industry, the bullshit start-up name, and the arbitrary family dynamics are all swappable, and this is the real future for millions, if not billions of us.

How do I avoid getting fucked like the crane guy?

In the 12th century, for most humans, life consisted of manual labor, watching your family die of disease at the old age of 29, eating food, and hoping there won’t be a famine. For the most part, they didn’t have the time to be creative, to explore new and novel ideas, and they certainly didn’t get to sit around dropping acid and writing music about it. No, their lives were short and miserable.

Fast forward to today, where individuals on YouTube have more subscribers than The Sopranos had viewers, where brands are distinguished by how funny their PR guy is on Twitter instead of what the company actually does, and where we put on VR headsets to stimulate ourselves.

This change is a result of mental freedom — the freedom from famine, from disease (vaccines work, and they’re not for the government to control you), and from being given a sword and shield to go fight some other dudes with a sword and shield. We are looking for happiness instead of survival. If you want to have a purpose in the future, you’re going to have to be a part of entertainment.

Entertainment doesn’t mean being a late night TV host. Entertainment means doing something that captures others humans’ attention. This could be in the form of writing excellent ad copy for one of those big AI start-ups, animating cartoons, doing stand-up comedy, or becoming a viral star on whatever platform is popular at the time.

Indeed, in a world where so many things are already controlled by advertisement, peoples’ time will become a new currency. If you can capture their attention, somebody is going to pay you to advertise to them.

The Barrier.

Fortunately, there is a barrier to what AI and robots can accomplish. They can’t make us laugh, cry, lust, or wonder. Even if somebody programmed a robot to tell pre-written jokes, we wouldn’t connect with the robot, we wouldn’t share in the nuances of the comedy, and we wouldn’t relate with the irony of the punchline. You could show AI a bunch of landscapes, then ask it to recreate them on canvas, and they would, but to us it wouldn’t mean anything.

The barrier between where AI can replace us and not is creativity. They may be able to calculate how and why something went viral, but won’t understand why it entertains us. They won’t understand the memes we make at their expense. They can’t write something to compete with Tolkien’s imagination.

The mechanical processes of this world, our future, and our economy will all be set, run, and controlled by AI, but the massive shift of our attention from tedious work to filling our free time with mind-numbing entertainment will forever remain in our hands.

You better start practicing.

To succeed in a future where your labour, experience, and intelligence becomes increasingly worthless, you’re going to have to spend less time being the audience, and more time being the subject. I don’t care if you’re a painter, a musician, or just think you’re funny; start practicing whatever it is.

In the great coming separation between AI and humans, you’re going to feel like you’re back in middle school, where popularity is king.

You didn’t go to Yale for Computer Science, you didn’t do cocaine with the children of millionaires, and you’re not hot enough to get hired anywhere you want for no reason. That’s fine. You’re not alone. In 20 years none of that will matter anyway.

Start embracing what makes you different as a person, not an employee.