Why Data Science and AI will drive productivity and the early retirement revolution

Reposting from LinkedIn Pulse published January 16, 2017

I flew home over the Christmas holidays and on the way back, having some time to spare, I perused the book shops and found the usual slew of self-help books on how to get rich quickly and how to make friends with a smile. But a new theme emerged; that of how to survive in a World where Humans have no need to work. In a recent blog post I wrote about why we should not fear technology, in the sense that technology will not become a direct menace to us, but it may become an indirect menace, as a race of creatures used to toil for survival becomes destined for leisure. Data science and artificial intelligence (AI) will usher in this new era.

The global productivity problem

We are not quite there yet though; the Western World today has a productivity problem. The financial crisis of 2007–2008, with following downturns in the Western economies, has squeezed the finances of the lower and middle classes. Corporates and multi-nationals have asked for greater output with fewer resources, and for a long time technology has allowed for productivity to rise. The increase in GDP per capita in the UK more than tripled 1965–2005, but has since stalled and is only recently back at the levels it reached before 2007. And what is worse, even though UK workers put in long hours, it seems they have little to show for it. According to official figures, the UK workforce has some of the lowest productivity scores in the Western World. So how do we go from being a low productivity economy, recuperating from one of the worst financial meltdowns in modern history, to redundancy of work? Is it possible? And is that even something we want?

Will AI save us?

If the last thirty years were about inventing and improving on the computer as a tool, used as an extension of ourselves, almost the equivalent of an ancient hammer or screwdriver, the next thirty will be about refining and moulding the capabilities of the computers to replace ourselves. I believe we are at an inflection point where the computer and its processor goes from apprentice to master. AI research and development is accelerating. Look at the recent advances in speech and voice recognition, and at…