Artificial Intelligence and the future of work

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer science fiction; it is already stealing our jobs and depressing the wage growth. The dreaded "technological singularity", when machine "intelligence" overtakes human capability, is already upon us. In the words of Jack Ma, founder of the global tech giant Alibaba Group, there will be massive unemployment across the globe in the future leading to wars, and "the next 30 years is (sic) going to be painful". In fact, the loss of jobs to automation has already started. Foxconn, the largest producer of consumer electronics in the world replaced 60,000 workers with robots in 2016. As global shipping and warehousing operations around the world are fast dumping human workers for robots, airborne commercial drones are being increasingly used for surveillance purposes as well as for delivering pizza, while robot chefs are on sale and have over 2,000 meals on their menu.