Magnus on Medium

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We have a rare window — call it the productivity paradox interlude — where adoption is sky-high but labor impacts are still muted. That window is our planning horizon. Let’s use it wisely, steer with intention, and ensure the coming efficiency boom funds the next great surge of human creativity.

How AI and robotics are rapidly reshaping every job from burgers to brain surgery. AI isn’t just knocking on society’s door — it’s already inside, reorganizing the furniture. Whether you’re ready or not, the era of automation is here, flipping burgers, pouring coffee, and soon, perhaps even wielding scalpels.

Predictions about when we arrive at the Official Technological Singularity have varied greatly, with some naysayers claiming it might never happen, and others who think it could be in the next few years. I decided to gather some data from the last few years to try and get some clarity about what AI has and hasn’t done so far, and where things might end up.

I have a little program that I wrote that scoops up interesting stories as they get published on RSS feeds and from around the web and then shares them on my Twitter (X) account. This program has several topics that it watches, such as technology, robotics, AI, investing and faith. I feed these articles to a bot that’s been trained on my writings to try and predict which ones I would actually be interested in, and then also to share and respond as I would if I wrote the response myself.

Siemens announced that it was cutting 8% of its workforce in Digital Industries and EV Charging last week, upwards of six thousand people. According to the company, the move was telegraphed late last year and was due to weak demand and increasing competition from China and Germany. But the fact that the day-to-day job of the majority of the workers was in fact for the purpose of industrial automation is worth considering.