How to Do More with Less

11The Future of Work

AGI and the Job Market of the Future

I still remember that one random summer day when the YouTube algorithm queued me to this video and Ray Kurzweil's work. He talked about the S-curve law of evolution, present in biology and technological progress. And this curve seems to be just as relevant in AI.

Life on Earth began with single-celled organisms that dominated for billions of years. For a long time, evolution seemed slow. But then came the Cambrian Explosion, around 541 million years ago, when complex, multicellular life burst onto the scene in a geological blink of an eye. From there, the pace quickened. Mammals emerged, then primates, followed by hominids. Homo sapiens only arrived around 300,000 years ago, and yet, in just the past few thousand years, human civilization has rocketed forward.

The story is similar in technology, particularly in the evolution of computing. Kurzweil often cites Moore's Law, the observation that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles roughly every two years, as one of many exponential trends. Each of these innovations had its own S-curve:

1. a slow beginning
2. a period of explosive improvement
3. and then a plateau as physical or theoretical limits were reached

But just as one technology began to falter, a new one would emerge to take its place, as shown in Figure 11.1. When the First technology plateaus, it is already the beginning of the Second technology.

You can see this happening within the timeline of, ...