Yesterday, I had the pleasure of opening this year’s TEDx Manchester with a keynote on AI & the Future of Work.

The thesis was (compressed into a frantic 15 minutes marred by a disobedient clicker) that in today’s day and age, mere knowledge is not necessarily power any longer because we have access to so much of it. At the same time, computers and AI and machine-learning algorithms make such quick advances that even tasks that were previously thought to be firmly in the domain of man are now being disrupted by machines. This has potentially very profound impacts not only on how we will live but also on how our society can work: if large parts of the population is no longer in the position to earn a living and lead a dignified life, we need to think afresh.

I focussed here on what is there already (with a somewhat crude shock-and-awe approach to wake everyone up) and offer a few hints on where we can focus to inoculate us and future generations (to an extent).

Here’s a link to the slides (SlideShare awarded them their “SlideShare of the Day”, so if nothing else, they’re pretty):