THE DIRTY SECRET IS THAT IT'S ALL REPETITIVE:

[A]rtificial intelligence is streamlining sales and marketing departments by using AI assistants to perform the time-consuming, mind-numbing task of customer outreach. Once the AI has identified a customer who is ready to buy, a human steps in and closes the deal, creating an optimally efficient system.

"Artificial intelligence will also eliminate jobs that are physically harmful or dangerous to humans," Drake noted. That's good news for factory workers who breathe in toxic chemicals, or bomb disposal experts, who place their lives on the line.

We've seen evidence of this happening in recent years as Chinese factory Changying Precision Technology replaced 90 percent of their workers with robots. The factory now uses automated production lines to build cell phone parts, which are overseen by only three human workers. The robots produce almost three times the amount a team of over 600 human workers used to and the defect rate decreased from 25 percent to less than 5 percent. [...]

Technology is changing at such a rapid speed that workers wanting to stay ahead of AI may benefit more from learning in real time, rather than getting an advanced degree, according to a recent study by Genpact.

Given the prohibitive costs of college, some are educating themselves through free or very low cost methods like Lynda.com, that teaches coding, SEO and graphic design, or even edX, which offers an online college-level education in data science, cyber security and other emerging jobs.

"I firmly believe that AI could free humans to dedicate more time to activities that really matter, enabling us to go back to a more balanced lifestyle where work (some of which is repetitive and de-humanizing) is not all there is," said Massimiliano Versace CEO of Neurala. "Perhaps AI will be the technology that will help us break free and pursue the activities that the modern lifestyle has taken from us in the past few decades."

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