I was recently reading a couple of books – Rise of the Robot by Martin Ford and Humans Do Not Need Apply by Jerry Kaplan. Both books share insights on the demise of both the industrial and knowledge eras. Both books provide key themes and stark warnings about the future of automation and its potential impact on humanity as we currently know it. Examples cited in the books: Artificially intelligent systems double in capacity every two years. AI drives cars, runs restaurants, writes articles, creates original art, composes symphonies and builds houses – and that’s just the beginning. In stock markets, “high-frequency trading” (HFT) systems skim vast profits, risk-free. These rapid HFT programs may fuel market chaos, as in the “Flash Crash” of 2010. Today’s “high-frequency trading” (HFT) systems complete transactions tens of thousands of times faster than humans can. In fractions of a second, HFT systems buy the stock low and sell it high, skimming the spread between prices. Some systems analyze market “sentiment,” finding subtle, fleeting correlations among diverse stocks. HFT systems may “smooth” the market, but they exacerbate the problem of wealth inequality. A near-total replacement of the knowledge worker could happen by 2035 in addition to extinction of careers in manufacturing, transportation, and agriculture. Some experts see opportunity – machines enhancing human intelligence and longevity, for example. Others worry about machines taking over. What do you think?