The Singularity is coming, Masayoshi Son says.

The founder of SoftBank, the Japanese conglomerate, had the business world chattering on Monday night with his speech at the Appeal of Conscience Foundation. (DealBook is the first to report on it.)

His main thrusts:

• The Singularity, when artificial intelligence finally outstrips that of humans, will replace huge swaths of jobs.

• The number of sentient robots on Earth will rival the number of humans.

From his speech:

"Here we have white collar and blue collar. I said a new collar will start: that is metal collar. That metal collar will not only replace most of the blue collar jobs, but many of the white collar jobs. So when they become so smart and the muscles to move, what is the definition of what mankind's job should be? What should we do if they replace many of our jobs? What is the value of our lives? We have to think once more, deeply."

More from Mr. Son on artificial intelligence: