We Are All Creatives: A Manifesto of Humanity in the Age of Automation

Mike Sturm
4 min readNov 7, 2017

By recent estimates, something like 47% of jobs face the threat of being automated over the next 20 years. That means that what was once done by humans alone will now be done by a machines and algorithms.

As more of that 47% becomes a reality, all eyes are fixated on that other 53% — the stuff that we used to think was solely the realm of human capacities. If you go back as far as Aristotle and the early scientists, it was reason that made humans unique in the world. And until humans built machines that could use the same logic they do, that was true.

c/o McKinsey & Co.

Now it isn’t reason that sets humans apart. We learn to reason the same way that machines do; after all, we taught them how to do it. We are becoming sympatico in that respect. Only now, machines can already do it faster and more efficiently. They can take the inputs that we take, and make judgments more quickly — allowing for faster implementation of decisions, often without humans even being involved.

So what’s left for us humans? And how do we ensure that the remaining 53% of jobs keep their essential human elements?

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Mike Sturm

Creator: https://TheTodaySystem.com — A simpler personal productivity system. Writing about productivity, self-improvement, business, and life.