Agentforce

Chapter 20So What Are We Humans Going to Do Now?

A committee of scientists and other thinkers sends an open letter to the president. It warns in vivid, pointed language that recent advances in technology will create “a separate nation of the poor, the unskilled, the jobless,” who will no longer be able to find work.

It goes on to say that this technology revolution:

“…has been brought about by the combination of the computer and the automated self-regulating machine. This results in a system of almost unlimited productive capacity which requires progressively less human labor.”¹

Sound familiar? Well, the year was 1964, and the president was Lyndon Johnson.

Each epoch of new technology is greeted simultaneously by bursts of excitement and fear as this new form of magic is processed and adopted by a society that never feels quite ready. So it is with AI, particularly in the context of human jobs and the workplace.

A CNN headline in 2024 read “AI is replacing human tasks faster than you think.”² The article cited a survey run by Duke University and the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and Richmond that revealed that 61% of U.S. firms planned to automate some tasks previously done by people in the following year.

A superficial scan of the article and survey might lead to the conclusion that AI is displacing people already – but in fact, the message of the survey was different.

Duke finance professor John Graham told CNN, “You can't be running an innovative company without seriously ...