So, now that the first wave has crashed upon us, with robots taking over people jobs, what do we do with people who can’t compete against robot-level “thinking,” be it repetitive factory assembly work, warehouse stocking/delivery, data analysis, automotive driving, lab tech work, house vacuuming, aerial bombardment, video surveillance, traffic control, virtual newspaper front page creation, social networking, stock market trades, technical support (via smart FAQs, chatbots), etc.?

Not only must we compare against each other for jobs in the global marketplace, where only the local job is [somewhat] secure — barber/hairstylist, restaurant worker, medical specialist, carpenter, plumber — we must now also compete against our electromechanical creations.

What do we do with the humans who do not have the mental training or motivation to compete against machines?

We talk about global trade and illegal immigration having a downward push on average worker wages, and thus takehome pay/disposable income, but we don’t often talk about the animatronic elephant in the room.

The future is now.

We are feeding the network that films like “Terminator” slyly joked about.

How dystopian you see our current future is up to you, depending on your place in the socioeconomic system we define as if there were hard-and-fast rules about a direct correlation between wages/housing/employment status and happiness.

If a robot replaces you and you are dismissed (fired/laid off) from your job, are you going to redefine your level of happiness?

Isn’t that the goal of a robotic world that was given to us many decades ago?  A new leisure class that no longer had to work because robots were going to “work” while we chose activities that we enjoyed, whatever we want to say we enjoy, including for some, work?

When our human-computer interface ratchets up the level of expectations/sensations/stimuli in the moment, like a natural high for which we grow numb after repeated achievement, seeking the next level of a natural high after another after another after another after another after another after another after another after another…sorry, I just couldn’t stop, you know how it is…where in all that are the products we can afford to buy when a large number of us no longer have jobs to pay for our place in this leisure class where “getting high” has so many new legal forms?

In other words, we are back to the definition of barbarians at the gate staring in wonder at a society which has vastly redefined the meaning of a job.

We are asking the barbarians (and I include myself here) to retrain ourselves to program the machines that are taking over the jobs we have to keep retraining ourselves past the point of enjoying ourselves to lose and rebid the jobs we make ever more complex for the sake of a system that is becoming more and more autonomous, pushing more and more of us out of the way.

It is an argument worth reminding ourselves to make during our rush to automate tasks that once gave us a good standard of living.

Buggy whip manufacturers and Luddites are the classic examples here, of course.

Inconsistencies and inefficiencies in the system  (e.g., medical doctors spending more time on complicated laptop computer programs than with their patients) create room for jobs but who’s minding the system that has grown bigger than any one of us or all of us combined?

When will a stock trading system, a factory and a distribution warehouse start producing profit for itself alone, no longer needing humans-in-the-loop for product sales to/for itself?

Can a robot in a factory predict its failure rate, order parts from another factory (we’ll leave off the thought of it using a local 3D printer to produce its own parts (which would, similar to the rest of this example, require a system to acquire/order raw material for the printer)), the factory receiving the order, fulfilling it, shipping it and installing it without a single one of us involved in the process?

Isn’t that the system we’re creating, the Second Wave, if you will?

Won’t some of the lessons we learn from remote-controlled drones and planetary rovers lead us to this scenario?

Haven’t automated crop management systems reached a similar point, ordering seeds, planting/maintaining/harvesting the crops and delivering the product to a market, where automated futures trading makes a profit for itself, which is shared with us?

Bottom line: where are many of us in the future?