One of the clearest insights into what a future automated world will look like has been given by one of the shipping industry’s most thought-leading futurists. And the predictions are startling with a large number of roles in shipping likely to be automated, unless you are in the people-to-people business, then you are likely to fare better when it comes to holding onto your job.
Geir Isene, Innovation Manager at Dualog’s Innovation Garage initiative, told a forum debate organised in Oslo by the Women’s International Shipping & Trading Association (WISTA) Norway branch, that the world of 100 years hence will be a lot different to what it is today, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) taking the strain across the majority of working disciplines, except for when it comes to people-to-people skills.
“If you look at AI today, we are already automating whole factories, but there is a move to automate more jobs. These include manual labour as well as jobs that are analytical in nature such as mathematics, computer science, statistics and astrophysics.”
One of the last jobs that will be automated away, are those jobs that affect people or are people driven, he added.
“In 100 years from now when there are no factories with humans in them and all the roads and seas are populated by automated cars and ships, empathy will be one of the last things to be automated,” he said.
So, in a nutshell, what will the world of tomorrow look like? Well according to Mr Isene, not only will humans be banned from driving cars for fear of disrupting the orderliness of automated travel, but money will be replaced by a bartering system where value services will be exchanged. Oh, and don’t fear the virtual world because we may be living most, if not all, of our time in it.
