"More pain than happiness."
That's how one man described the coming impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation on humankind.
This wasn't some tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist.
It came from Jack Ma - the man behind one of the most meteoric rises in modern corporate history.
Ma, founder and chair of Chinese e-commerce powerhouse Alibaba, said it while speaking in a prestigious slot at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
You should be listening to him.
I certainly am.
You see, if you or a member or your family is working and earning between $40,000 and $80,000 a year, you have reason to be worried.
And if you or someone you love makes less than $20 an hour, you should be terrified.
Here's why...
According to a recent White House report, there's a 1-in-3 chance that workers in that first group will be replaced by robots and AI in the next few years.
And if you're in that second group, it's even worse: Those folks face 8-in-10 odds of losing their job to an automaton.
The White House and Ma are far from alone in predicting this threat to our very way of life.
The World Economic Forum, in a report out of past Davos meetings, predicts AI and robotics will cause 7.1 million job losses by 2020 in the world's top 15 economies.
The United Nations' International Labor Organization sees an increase in global unemployment of 11 million in the next four to five years.
Famed physicist Stephen Hawking warned that AI "could spell the end of the human race."
Before you dismiss these staggering reports as fear-mongering - if you believe we'll keep creating new industries and jobs, as we did following the Industrial Revolution and other periods of upheaval - consider this...
In a recent interview, AI expert James Barrat said that what we're about to see is unlike any of the innovations we've seen before.
"In history, technological advancement has not yielded a net loss of jobs. It never has," said Barrat, a documentary filmmaker and author of the 2013 book Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era. "AI is different. In history, innovation comes along in a kind of plodding way, and the cotton gin hits and revolutionizes an industry and displaces a bunch of workers - but they get retrained. AI, robots, and automation are going to be in every industry.
*"Nothing will be preserved."
He might be right...
Most people will likely survive this Jobless Future - whether through scraping together enough "gigs" to put food on the table or through measly government handouts.
But to me, mere survival isn't good enough.
And I bet you feel the same way.
It is best for you to thrive - and profit - during the Jobless Future.
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Keep Grinding,
