Historian Yuval Noah Harari on the Robot Revolution

Harari, age 43, recently spoke to The Future of Everything about potential winners and losers in the automation revolution, how AI could help dictatorships outpace democracies, and the rise of machines more sympathetic than humans. "The automation revolution will make a lot of jobs disappear. This is not necessarily such a bad scenario. The question is whether it will be possible to support people's lives and the development of their emotional and spiritual lives without jobs. Many jobs--maybe even most jobs--that exist today are not worth defending. What we need to protect is the humans. In the current political and economic system, if you want to have your basic needs fulfilled and, for many people, to have meaning and purpose in your life, you need a job. If we could achieve these other aims without a job, then many jobs are not worth protecting. Many jobs are very difficult, very boring, very unfulfilling. People do them because they have to, not because it's really their dream to be a cashier or to drive a truck. If you can be released from these hours of working, you could perhaps develop your human potential in a much fuller way. In this sense, you are becoming more human."