Opinion: It's past time to prepare for a future where the workforce has as many robots as people

The World Economic Forum predicts that by 2025, automation will have created at least 12 million more jobs than it replaces. — Image by macrovector on Freepik

There's a scene in the movie I, Robot where a robot-hating police officer, played by Will Smith, is questioning the manufacturer of a robot suspected of murdering a human. The conversation gets testy, and the robot maker, played by Bruce Greenwood, looks Smith in the eye and says, "I suppose your father lost his job to a robot. I don't know, maybe you would have simply banned the Internet to keep the libraries open."

Art imitating life? To a degree, yes. Automation, artificial intelligence, and robots are costing people their jobs. But no, none are suspected of committing a homicide as a result. And the last time we checked, none were known to be organising an AI insurrection, which was the premise behind I, Robot's plot.