Everyone is well aware of roughly how AI will reshape the future over the coming years and decades, but one terrifying prediction from an expert has left people feeling as if need to 'act now' in order to save humanity.
Artificial intelligence in the way that most people know it has only really been a thing for a few years now, with ChatGPT 'only' becoming available to the public for the first time in November 2022.
What started out as worries about college assignments and emails has transformed into something far bigger (and often far scarier) in just a short amount of time, and experts have made a number of worrying predictions for the future.
While not all of them will be quite as harrowing as one realistic timeline that sees humanity wiped out by 2030, many theories result in most people losing their jobs and AI dramatically accelerating the climate crisis as a result of its immense carbon footprint.
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However, one particular prediction in relation to a certain type of work has left many wondering what they can do to act now, as the future appears to be in jeopardy with no safety net in sight.
As reported by Benzinga, entrepreneur and venture capitalist Jason Calacanis has made the frightening prediction that Amazon (and likely other similar companies) will have replaced all of its warehouse and delivery staff with robots — and that'll all happen in the next five years by 2030.
Speaking to Tim Miller on The Bulwark podcast, Calacanis explained: "Before 2030, you're going to see Amazon, which has massively invested in [AI], replace all factory workers and all drivers.
"It will be 100% robotic, which means all of those workers are going away. Every Amazon worker, all those jobs. UPS, gone. FedEx, gone."
He also added in a post on X that "in 2035 this will not be a controversial take. Hard, soul-crushing labor is going away over the next decade. We will be deep in that transition in 2030, when humanoid robots are as common as bicycles."
The immediate reaction to this can somewhat be split into two sides, as the shock of mass redundancies will potentially leave millions of people worldwide not only without a job but without any available means of gaining employment in place of what they lost.
However, Calacanis references the elimination of 'soul-crushing labor', and there is the consideration that the rise of robots in the workplace will make our lives as humans easier, as the 'hard' jobs will be taken over by advanced technology.
One scientist who popularised a theory that we're all living in a simulation has echoed this too, as he believes that a 'jobless world' will be utopian for the human race as it'll allow everyone to focus on what they actually want without being weighed down by their employment.
However, many are understandably worried that there is no plan in place to support the millions (or more likely, billions) of people who will have their jobs eliminated by AI over the next decade or so, with people urging that everyone needs to 'act now' in order to preserve the world as we know it.
"We can't just sit around waiting for the unemployment rate to hit 50% before doing something," urges one post on the r/singularity subreddit. "Leaders need to start laying the groundwork now.
"That means things like guaranteed income, better safety nets, and retraining programs for jobs AI can't easily replace. We also need to rethink work itself — shorter weeks, job sharing, maybe even taxing automation so everyone benefits from the productivity gains."
Elon Musk has previously discussed the concept of a 'universal high income' program that would allow everyone across the world to live lavishly as a result of AI and automation, but it remains difficult to see a situation where the current world and political climate would be capable of producing something that would unilaterally benefit everyone in this manner.
"Difficult with companies competing with each other and countries also competing with each other," one commenter explained. "You kind of have to enforce those things for every company synchronized worldwide by all governments worldwide. Nobody wants to be at a disadvantage, or even *can* put themselves in a disadvantage without [the risk] of just going under."