The man behind the digital banking app Monzo has shared a bleak forecast about what the future holds now that AI is taking over.
Tom Blomfield has chimed in on the debate around how the world's ever-growing reliance on the complex computer systems will eventually bite us in the backside.
According to the Buckinghamshire-born businessman, white-collar workers will likely get the brunt of it - but even more concerningly, he suspects those in highly skilled professions aren't safe either.
Tech experts have been warning that numerous careers will become extinct in the coming years, as it appears that robots really will eventually replace workers.
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Even Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, who has been dubbed the 'Godfather of AI', has said it's simply a 'matter of time' before the jobs market takes a huge hit.
Blomfield, 40, is bracing for a similar scenario to unfold in the future, and the former Monzo CEO delved into his theories during a recent appearance on The Rest Is Money while speaking to economist Robert Peston.
He described the rise of AI as a 'technological and industrial revolution' that is 'on par with anything we have ever seen in human history'.
"The breakthroughs that have happened and will continue to happen over the next months and years feel easily bigger than the internet," Blomfield said.
"And I think will reshape the economy and and society. It's quite unprecedented."
He explained that AI systems are being packed with 'all of the data that they can get their hands on' from books and the internet, meaning that even the intelligence of the brightest people on the planet would pale in comparison.
Blomfield said AI technology can complete 'narrow human tasks currently better than any human', so it's inevitable that employers will eventually want to reshuffle their workforce.
The co-founder of GoCardless acknowledged that although some jobs will be easier to automate than others, a lot of 'professions will get dramatically compressed'.
"Almost no humans will be required at all...the implications for society will be enormous," Blomfield continued, although he did point out that he believes people 'will still be useful' in other areas.
In the future, Blomfield believes that companies will no longer hire 'junior' staff members and will instead heavily rely on AI and a handful of 'senior' employees.
When asked what this means in terms of employment, he responded: "I think we'll all be out of jobs. I don't think humans will be economically useful in the medium term.
"I think we're basically primates who have evolved to make very quick gut-based decisions, and I think we will realise we're extraordinarily bad at deep analysis, thinking about second and third order impacts.
"When the super intelligent AI comes around - and it will come around very quickly - it will be laughable to think back and and assume that we were the smartest things on the planet."
Shockingly, Blomfield suggested that 'being a senior lawyer or a senior doctor will seem like a joke' in a world where AI runs the show.
He said: "We're seeing it already in medicine - where you go to a medical professional and get a piece of advice, and then go to ChatGPT and it solves the thing that the human couldn't.
"I think once you've experienced that three or four times, you're not going to go back to the doctor or the lawyer anymore. Knowledge work is the first thing that falls.
"I don't think humans are economically useful for knowledge work in in the future," Blomfield added, suggesting this could be a reality in as little as five years.
However, he thinks humans will still have value if they have a trade - until 'robotics come'. We've got a bit longer to prepare for this though, as Blomfield pointed out that manufacturing these will take a while.
Blomfield suspects 'super intelligent AI and pervasive robotics' will soon be at the forefront of everyday life.
"I think that will happen in our lifetime and I think that will upend the social and economic structures of at least the Western world," he said.
Topics: Technology, Jobs, News, Artificial Intelligence, AI
Olivia Burke