Many of these new jobs, including those at Uber, are taking shape on what you call the "edge of automation." Do you fear that these jobs might quickly disappear as technology keeps evolving?

Everything about Uber has been automated except for the driver. The billing, the fetching--every part of it is a modern, information-centric company. Interestingly, what that means is as soon as automated vehicles arrive, that driver is easily removed. You don't have to restructure any part of that business.

What you're farming out to humans today are those things that computers just barely can't do. We know from Moore's Law and improvements in computing that in two or three years [much of this] work will be automated.

If a startup or new business venture has created a job that involves human labor, it probably has done so in a way that is pretty marginal. Whether you're a technology enthusiast or a detractor, the rate at which this will shift is probably going to be unprecedented. There will be massive dislocation.

Which jobs will survive?

In the long run, 500 years from now, everyone is going to be involved in some kind of information or entertainment. Nobody on the planet in 500 years will do a physically repetitive thing for a living. There will be no farmers, there will be no people working in manufacturing. To me it is an impossibility that people would do that. People might do it for fun. You might have an organic garden in your backyard because you love it. Five hundred years from now I don't know if even 10 percent of people on the planet have a job in the sense of being paid to do something.