Hey HN, author here! Thanks for reading. If you got through this article, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts! Feel free to PM me (@breandan or bre @ ndan .co). You might also enjoy reading about some of other articles I wrote about notation [1] or democratising education [2]:

[1]: http://breandan.net/2015/02/01/shorthand/

[2]: http://breandan.net/2016/04/13/equal-education-in-china/

Loved the article, thank you.

It reminded me of how when AI won at Go, my first thought was, "Oh, now we just need to train it to teach humans to improve."

I hadn't before thought about how training the AI to teach would introduce bias. I think it would be fascinating to train an AI based on the best human teachers and then track the results on real kids to train it to get better over time -- but then who decides what "better" means?

I'm sure at first it would be an augmentation helping new teachers improve, but then who trains it what a better teacher means?

Fascinating. Thanks again.

Great article - I really enjoyed it. Who are you? Your blog doesn't have an about page.

Thanks for the feedback! Thought about it, although I'd rather the writing speak for itself. I'm just a guy who enjoys writing. If you enjoy reading, you're welcome to follow me on GitHub or Twitter, sometimes I post interesting stuff:

https://github.com/breandan

https://twitter.com/breandan

Im not so much worryied about jon doe beeing unemployed, he will cope, but what about his boss, sitting alone in a big empty house, with no real power about anything, what about the psychological needs of power animals? What if you are just a glorified financial janitor? Sell it all and start a gang, to have that feeling of people looking up to you again?

I expect they'll do what they did in high school: sports.

Isn't that what social networks are for, validating our own self-importance?

If China's population is ~1.3 billion, then how will trains move ~3 billion in the largest migration in human history?

Author here. Passengers take multiple journerys during Spring Festival. After some fact-checking, 2.9B appears to be the total number of passenger journeys [1] (not just train journeys), which is estimated to be ~332 million in 2016 [2], according to the Information Office of the Ministry of Transport. However, Chinese state sources have a history of inflating their own statistics [3], so the true number of passengers journeys is probably less that reported. I have updated the post to clarify, thanks for reading carefully!

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunyun

[2]: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/02/travel/china-guangzhou-rai...

[3]: http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/18/news/economy/china-province-...

Thank you! =) Pretty interesting article.

I totally agree with most of what you say and can't deny it is quite scary but one thing that machines will not be able to replace creativity. Machines can't think outside the box. In a clothes factory machines may saw the same dress over and over but once people stop buying because it is so bored of same thing manufacturer will end up with massive loss. They can play the same song over and over but we get bored. So as long as we get bored of reputations we will survive

This is something I've thought about. If AI creates post-scarcity paradise what do people do? Automation could theoretically create unlimited luxuries particularly suited to you but then you just become a blob hitting the pleasure button, fun for a while but ultimately unfulfilling. People find joy where they will, I for one praise our incoming AI overlords and welcome their arrival with open arms!

This is a fantastic writeup, couldn't have written it better myself. Thank you.