Sleeping on the job...

If you're reading this and you're not already retired, there's a good chance artificial intelligence is coming for your job.

- BEN TROVATO

A recent study by Microsoft listed 40 occupations most threatened by Al's invincible army that promises progress and threatens destruction in equal measure. Somewhere at the top are writers, authors, journalists, proofreaders and editors. These are pretty much the only things I know how to do. But I also know how not to do them.

In the foreseeable future, the only people with jobs will be those who work more with their hands than their brains. Murderers, for instance.

We're some way off before robots are trained to break into houses or stab you for your phone, but it's just a matter of time.

It’s not only sociopaths and politicians whose career paths are secure. The least exposed jobs include floor sanders, truck drivers, pavers, tilers, cleaners - people you might have thought beneath you as you sped off to your destined-for-redundancy office job. Now who’s laughing? Well, nobody just yet. But there will be laughing. And blood.

There will come a time when translators, historians, mathematicians, journalists and salesmen huddle together on street corners holding cardboard signs, begging for a job. Any job.

It’s too late for my generation. Hell, if you're a parent of a kid in matric, it’s probably too late for you, too. Your best bet is inheritance. It might even be too late for the kid. School curriculums have not adapted quickly enough to train young brains into an entirely new way of thinking.