Daniel Susskind imagines 'A world without work'.

So that's it. A.I. has taken over. Jobs are gone. What's next for humanity? Daniel Susskind, fellow in economics at Oxford University, takes a look at technological unemployment and the possible outcomes of automation. Including problems of inequality, power and purpose.

Some key highlights: next to the substituting force of automation (replacing humans by machines), there always was another force at work: the complementing force. The latter created a productivity effect (automation of specific tasks could bring more focus on other tasks, resulting in better quality of services and products).

There was also the 'bigger pie effect'. If we think of economy as a pie, technological progress has made this pie much bigger. This resulted in an increase of demand for goods and services and the need for people to produce them. Finally there was the 'changing pie' effect. Moving work from the fields, into the factories, towards the offices made people move along. Except, now we are moving into the cloud. And in the cloud you will not find any human beings (except for pilots and cabin crews of course).

Then there's A.I. Today, we are facing machines that can learn how to perform tasks themselves. Machines no longer need human explanations on how to do stuff. It's no longer human intelligence that underpins machine capability. Even more, the machines create entirely new rules as they go. Making 'second wave A.I.' far more opaque. Just a reminder of the world we are moving into. Which brings us to the threat and the challenge.

As we see machines take on more and more tasks that were once performed by humans, we also notice that all our main capabilities (manual, cognitive and affective) are under increasing pressure. And the logic behind the encroachment of the labor market is very simple: if it's cheaper and more effective, replace the man by the machine.

This is happening today at an astonishing speed. And the effects are very scary: e.g. today a third of Americans with degrees in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects are already working in roles that do not require those qualifications. Where it all will end? In structural technological unemployment. Because humans will become economically useless (just like horses in the beginning of the 20th century).

That brings us (and Daniel Susskind) to the challenge: what will happen in a world with less work? There will be rising inequality (it already clearly shows today) as 'human capital' will become less and less valuable. And there will be a need for 'redistribution' of society's economic prosperity. Enter: the Big State that will take care of 'taxation' and 'redistribution' of wealth, resulting in a 'conditional basic income' and a new search for meaning and purpose in our lifes.

More about Daniel Susskind on this website.