Technology has created more jobs than it has destroyed, says 140 years of data

But a lot of that improvement has been off the back of Rest of World, where slave-like conditions still endure. It's fine to have hairdressers here, but it's useful to remember that hairdressing is only possible because there are textile makers, miners, and farmers working in extremely harsh conditions elsewhere in the world.

And there's also been incredible damage to the planetary carrying capacity, with effects that will become more and more obvious as the century progresses.

So it's just as possible to argue that technology is more like a drug that works on generational time scales: you get a hit, you feel awesome for a while, then you fall apart.

We're in a new and exponentially developing Renaissance, the likes of which we have no historical analogy for (not even the actual Renaissance or Industrial Revolution). It's incredibly exciting, but we're in for quite a ride over the next few decades, and our sociopolitical foundations are not prepared for it in the slightest. I think encouraging further procrastination of preparedness does a disservice to us all.

I think if you look at the stats it's been slowly upgrading rather than visa versa. I don't see much sign of the trend reversing globally. Pessimists tend to look at worker living standards in the US where they have been kind of static, ignoring the poorest 80% of the planet where they have been shooting up. China for example has been transformed over the last 30 years.

Some conditions don't change. An OAP with limited mobility will always require assistance day-to-day, and it's the sort of thing robots are really bad at. OAPs are also growing in number, as life expectation increases. Another one: you will always need someone to help give birth - in fact, as hospitals are deemed too expensive and scaled back, we will likely need more nurses, since home-births stop them from sharing their time between patients. Again, this will not be touched by automation. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples.

>2. How much more can they grow ?

I think that's more a function of our social organisation than technology. The real question is basically "how can we pay these people?" -- morality and common sense tell us that a lot of these activities should not be linked to profit, but that is economically challenging unless we rethink how money is created and distributed.

> We're talking about 40% of jobs at risk due to automation in 20 years.

I find that number too high to be true. 10 or 20%, maybe; 40%, it's really hard to believe - that's 15 million people in the UK without a job, where currently we have 2.3million unemployed. It would mean basically 1 million newly unemployed people each year; I would argue society would not survive 5 years in such conditions, let alone 20.

In any case, I have no doubt we can create more office-based bullshit roles to offset the bulk of those losses (dedicated entertainment people in every office; corporate psychologists; continuous-change oversight; dedicated corporate tailors; and so on and so forth...).