Rupert the Bear's warning on AI, robots and jobs

Johann Rupert, head of the powerful Richemont luxury goods company whose brands include Cartier, Piaget and Dunhill, takes a bleak view of how the new technologies arising from artificial intelligence and robots will affect employment and social stability. Rupert says hundreds of millions of jobs will be lost as they are introduced. Existing social inequalities, on which the luxury industry thrives, will be reinforced, he says. If much greater structural unemployment results, the social fabric of developed societies will be torn apart by envy, hatred and social warfare as many middle class jobs are destroyed. That would make the luxury sector unsustainable.