The Worlds That AI Might Create

How are experts looking at the same present and arriving at such different and contradictory futures? Here's a look at five scenarios, and the paths that getting there might take. As artificial intelligence becomes more powerful, a lot of current jobs are doomed to disappear. University of Oxford researchers in 2017 estimated that nearly half of all U.S. jobs were at risk from AI-powered automation. Other forecasts come up with different estimates, but by any measure, the number of lost jobs is potentially huge. Automation has already made manufacturing, mining, agriculture and many other industries much less labor-intensive. One study estimated that from 1993 to 2007, each industrial robot replaced 3.3 workers. With about 2.5 million robots in industry now and more than three million expected by 2020, the trend is expected to accelerate, and manufacturing could lose up to 20 million jobs by 2030, according to a study this year by Oxford Economics.