<i>Part of Musk’s worry stems from social destabilization and job loss. “When I say everything, the robots will do everything, bar nothing,” he said.</i><p>That's still a ways off. Robot manipulation in unstructured environments is still terrible. See the DARPA Humanoid Challenge. People have been underestimating that problem for at least 40 years.<p>But that doesn't help with the job situation. Only 14% of the US workforce is in manufacturing, mining, construction, and agriculture, the jobs where robot manipulation in unstructured environments matters. Those aren't the jobs at risk.<p>I've been saying for a while that the near future is "Machines should think, people should work". An Amazon warehouse is an expression of that concept. So are some fast-food restaurants. So is Uber. The computers handle the planning and organization of work; the humans are just hands for the computers. (Yes, "Manna", by Marshall Brain.) That's going to become more common. Computers are just better at organization and communication than humans.<p>Computers have already made a big dent in middle-class jobs, and that's going to continue.
If everything you do goes in and out over a wire, you're very vulnerable to automation. If 20% of what you do can't be done by a computer, that means five of you will be replaced by one person. This is already hitting low-level lawyers; it hit paralegals years ago.<p>The end state of this trend is a modest number of well-paid people in control, a huge number of people taking orders from computers, and many people without jobs. That's not far away; one or two decades. It's mostly deploying technology that already exists.