Talk of robots making humans obsolete is generally a topic that is still laughed off as science fiction by most, but a new video by popular YouTube history buff and myth debunker CGP Grey could get you to rethink the future human work.

In a video titled "Humans Need Not Apply," Grey lays out a compelling case for why almost half of those currently in the work force could struggle to find work once automation takes over in the near future.

Unlike the lofty visions of "the singularity," in which artificial intelligences take over the planet in rapid and dramatic fashion, Grey paints a picture, backed up by statistics and current developments, indicating that the true singularity will occur gradually, with software and automatons slowly erasing human jobs before we realize what's really happening.

The analogy Grey uses to make his point is the horse and buggy in the 1900s versus the modern day car. According to Grey, the horse, viewed by many historians as one of the central tools aiding the advancement of human society for hundreds of years, is a perfect example of how quickly human workers can and will be rendered obsolete in favor of machine automation.

Perhaps the most startling assertion made by Grey is his convincing deconstruction of the notion that, as machines replace human workers, society will naturally find new work for the growing ranks of the unemployed.

"The jobs that the robots will leave for humans will be those that require thought and knowledge," said Internet sociologist Howard Rheingold in a recent Pew Research report.

But Grey isn't buying it.

According to Grey, the machine takeover won't be limited to physical labor but will permeate areas such legal matters, medical advice and even creative arts like music, painting and (egad!) writing. Toward the end of the video Grey speculates that up to 45% of the current workforce could disappear due to automation.

Grey's analysis, peppered with examples like the development of Google's self-driving car and IBM's Watson, is indeed thought provoking and, in some ways, terrifying.

But what his tale of the future doesn't account for is human culture's impact on the development of these tools. None of the technologies Grey mentioned are developed and deployed in a vacuum.

At some point (perhaps sooner than we realize), humanity may find itself once again engaged in a sort of neo-Luddite movement in which humans begin to rebel against machine automation in the interest of keeping people involved in the chain of production, be it as an attorney or as a flute player in the park.

That is, assuming we all don't willingly plug into The Matrix and surrender. But that would never happen, right?