The prospect of more intelligent and more capable machines has generated fears that machines might replace humans entirely while concentrating wealth in the hands of a tiny minority of people.10 Some jobs are already going this way. For example, machine vision algorithms are currently upstaging radiologists in the task of assessing medical images. Translators are also being replaced by increasingly capable machine translation algorithms. Robots are already replacing certain kinds of workers, particularly those performing relatively simple, repetitive tasks: certain kinds of machine operators and drivers.11
Although it is unlikely that intelligent machines will replace humans in most jobs on the 25-year timescale, intelligent machines are likely to lead to considerable changes in society.12 The fraction of the workforce that becomes unemployed will need to be looked after and retrained where possible. And this will have to be paid for by governments, who will need to find new ways of gathering and redistributing the wealth generated by machines.13 Having historically raised revenue by taxing labour, governments will have to tax or redistribute capital to support future societies. This will also help to prevent the concentration of wealth in the hands of small group of machine owners. Radical economic innovations like new taxation models will need to be incentivised by regulators — a programme that will require collaborative economic, political and social action on global scales.
