The writer is inaugural DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge and author of ‘The Atomic Human: Understanding Ourselves in the Age of AI’

The philosopher’s stone is a mythical material that can convert base metals to gold. In our modern economy, automation has the same effect. During the industrial revolution, steel and steam replaced human manual labour. Today, silicon and electrons are being combined to replace human mental labour. 

This transformation creates efficiency. But it also devalues the skills that form the backbone of human capital and create a happy, healthy society. Had the alchemists ever discovered the philosopher’s stone, using it would have triggered mass inflation and devalued any reserves of gold. Similarly, our reserve of precious human capital is vulnerable to automation and devaluation in the artificial intelligence revolution. The skills we have learnt, whether manual or mental, risk becoming redundant in the face of the machine.