Only Humans Need Apply

What if the effect of the pairing were to make humans more capable of what they are good at (and likewise, machines even better at what they do)? That would be augmentation. More than a division of labor, it would constitute a multiplication of value.

If you are a motivated knowledge worker, trying to do your best, augmentation has your back

augmentation—in which humans and computers combine their strengths to achieve more favorable outcomes than either could alone.

even at the ultimate level, no matter how smart these machines get, there is still some potential value from human augmentation. Humans not only would create these autonomous, self-aware systems, but they would also need to monitor and improve them over time.

Computers may be able to do depth well, but they can’t match us in breadth—yet.

We expect robots to continue gaining ground in repetitive tasks. What would make them advance more quickly would be combining the industrial robots’ ability to deal with heavier work with the collaborative robots’ ease of programming.

Purely digital administrative tasks are now being performed routinely by smart machines. This is the category in which “rule engines” excel.

the Internet connects more smart objects than people (and has thus become an Internet of things); by 2020, Cisco estimates, the number of devices connected to the Internet will rise to 50 billion.

Human support” remains the role for smart machines

The jobs are deskilled when technologies are introduced that no longer require workers to have formerly necessary skills—meaning that semiskilled or unskilled workers can now hold those jobs.