This was a theme returned to in 1983 by the Nobel Prize–winning economist Wassily Leontief. For Leontief, human labour in the twenty-first century would come to resemble horses at the turn of the twentieth. Now, as then, a key source of value-creation and wealth would become obsolete: Computers and robots [will] replace humans in the exercise of mental functions in the same way as mechanical power replaced them in the performance of physical tasks. As time goes on, more and more complex mental functions will be performed by machines … this means that the role of humans as the most important
...more
