Much like the internet did in the 1990s, AI is going to change the very definition of work. While change can be scary, if the last three years taught us anything, it can also be an opportunity to reinvent how we do things. I believe the best way to manage the changes ahead for employees and employers alike is to adopt a skills-first mindset. For employees, this means thinking about your job as a collection of tasks instead of a job title, with the understanding that those tasks will change regularly as AI advances. By breaking down your job into tasks that AI can fully take on, tasks for which AI can improve your efficiency, and tasks that require your unique skills, you can identify the skills you should actually be investing in to stay competitive in the job you have. This story is from the WIRED World in 2024, our annual trends briefing.

Economists and policymakers are becoming increasingly concerned about the effects of automation and artificial intelligence on employment--including whether some kinds of jobs will cease to exist at all. Trucking is often thought to be one of the first industries at substantial risk. The work is difficult, unsafe, and often deadly and high rates of driver turnover are a constant problem in the industry. As a result, autonomous trucks have become a site of tremendous technical innovation and investment--and some forecasters project that truck driving will be one of the first major industries to be targeted by AI-driven automation. If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission.

The rise of cashless and cardless retail transactions suggests consumers are growing comfortable with paying for products from accounts linked to portable devices. How quickly these commerce modalities go mainstream is an open question, but Mastercard is leaving nothing to chance. The global payment network is not only preparing for digital commerce ruled by recommendation systems fueled by machine learning systems but also war-gaming for the arrival of 5G, as well as the proliferation of IoT and AI, says Jorn Lambert, Mastercard's executive vice president of digital solutions. Get the latest insights with our CIO Daily newsletter. This short- and long-term view sketches out a vision of payments revolutionized by machine-to-machine commerce and hyperpersonalized transactions, a reality Lambert expects will become mainstream in the next three to five years.

As artificial intelligence becomes integrated into more technology in our homes and workplaces, concerns about its ethical implications are growing. It seems like every day there are new tools designed to help workers use their time more efficiently with machine learning. If these trends continue, what will the workplaces of the future look like? What if it goes wrong? Keiichi Matsuda's new short film Merger taps into that uncertainty by imagining a workplace where humans have been proven to be less capable than AI.