Flipboard on Flipboard

Disruption, once a bullish V.C. buzzword, has taken on a darker meaning in the Trump era. And Silicon Valley, once ridiculed for its utopian babble about making the world a better place, has grown noticeably more apocalyptic in its outlook. Futurists like Elon Musk, Masayoshi Son, and Sam Altman have made a name for themselves not only for the billion-dollar businesses they have helped to build but also for their ominous warnings about the potential for artificial intelligence and automation to make millions, or even billions of jobs obsolete. Now, it appears, the doom-and-gloom mentality has overtaken the Chinese mainland, too. Over the weekend, the executive chairman of e-commerce giant Alibaba, Jack Ma, added his voice to the dystopian chorus.