Check out part one of this series for what the next five to fifteen years looks like in AI. In part two we get super sci-fi and see if our crystal ball can reach 50 years into the future. Once dumb objects have woken up. Your shirt is babbling away with your shades and having a conversation with your girlfriend's pearl earrings when she's traveling to give a talk in Brazil. Everything from our houses, to weapons, to planes, trains and automobiles, to roads, clothes, jewelry, headphones, glasses, and eye contacts are wild with thoughts. The dynamic new algorithms that pushed us past deep learning and powered the fourth wave of the intelligence revolution sprang from world wide efforts to map every single neuron and connection in the human brain. Eventually the processors and biotechnology caught up with our ambitions and scientists succeeded beyond our wildest expectations.

While jobs that rely on manual labor may increasingly fall to machines, everything from the design of these systems to their upkeep has the potential to create new jobs for humans. There's also the capacity for technology to augment the human workforce, allowing them to accomplish tasks that would otherwise be impossible. For instance, imagine a robotic suit that could allow a factory worker to lift objects so heavy they could never perform the task with their human strength alone (at least not without incurring injury). In a more general sense, these technologies stand to increase productivity, which would have far-reaching benefits.

Once theorized as visions of a future society, technology like automation and artificial intelligence are now becoming a part of everyday life. These advancements in AI are already impacting our economy, both in terms of individual wealth and broader financial trends. It's long been theorized that a readily available machine workforce will make it more difficult for humans to keep their jobs, but automation may, in fact, offer up more even-handed consequences. Major changes are coming, but there's reason to believe these changes could benefit a broader range of stakeholders -- not just corporations who no longer have to worry about paying living wages (just parts and servicing). "It is far more an opportunity for growth," said Joshua Gans, holder of the Jeffrey S. Skoll chair of technical innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.