The Future of Jobs: No Jobs?

There will be a surge of jobs that will go obsolete in our lifetime. Once autonomous vehicles are mainstream (and required by law. I see it being mandated in the future for safety and efficiency reasons), we won't need public transportation drivers (including those brand new Uber drivers) or even truck drivers. It's only a matter of time where majority of restaurant employees are replaced by technology as well. Many pharmacists will be replaced with technology which will essentially have a 0% error rate as it will know the patients details and have data on every medication being taken.

With artificial intelligence and machine learning, technology will "think" for us; and it'll do it faster and better than we possibly could.

So, this brings us to: where will the jobs be? Well, only time can really tell. I've spoke to many of my peers that say "We'll find jobs for everyone". But I don't think there will be enough "jobs" for everyone once technology solves many of the world's problems like manufacturing and transportation. But is that really a terrible issue to have?

The debate for a universal basic income will arise; it has already in some places (definitely not in the United States, sadly). There will certainly be more time for leisure and that's one of the benefits of advancing technology; isn't that what we want? But how will the population deal with lesser priority in success in one's career? One's motive to be productive is one of the most significant aspects of our lives today. There will be a time where "working to make a living" will disappear. I know it can be hard to believe but eventually, automation will make that world plausible.

Creativity is one aspect that will grow in the future. As we are seeing already, technology will give people new methods of being creative. It'll take technology a bit longer to figure out how to do those tasks, like make music, create movies, and come up with stories. But there will be a time where technology will be able to create these things for everyone's individual taste (even create imaginary actors/actresses).

Maybe we'll start inhabiting other planets/moons. But the robots will probably do most of the work then too...

What will slow all of this from happening? Technologically advancement. Power and greed. But most importantly, the open-mindedness of how our lives should be (e.g. working 40 hours/week is what we need to do to earn a living). If we are deathly afraid of losing the "stability" of the 40 hour work week, we'll probably never reach the levels of automation that can dramatically change how we live and work.