"More jobs predicted for machines, not people".

Here's an NYT article about new research about the impact of automation on employment. Two MIT economists have suddenly turned worried.

“Many workers, in short, are losing the race against the machine,” the authors write.

Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist and director of the M.I.T. Center for Digital Business, and Andrew P. McAfee, associate director and principal research scientist at the center, are two of the nation’s leading experts on technology and productivity. The tone of alarm in their book is a departure for the pair, whose previous research has focused mainly on the benefits of advancing technology.

Computers are potentially able to take on characteristics which had been thought of as distinctively human, they say, such as speech or driving.

Google has apparently been successfully operating automated cars on US highways recently, with only occasional assistance from human backseat drivers. This is not good news for truckers in the medium term.