As the beat of the innovation drum marches on, many in today’s society question how advancing technology will impact their lives for better or worse. Author and thought leader in the technology space Tal Klein shared his vision for the future of technology and it’s role in society in his recent book, “The Punch Escrow.”

“One of my deep goals is to write a STEM-oriented book that gets people excited about technology and present the future as not a dystopian place. So I wanted the science to be there and have sort of a gravity to the narrative, but it’s tough,” Klein said. “I worked with a physicist, a biologist, a geneticist, an anthropologist and a lawyer just to figure out what the future will look like.”

Klein spoke with host Stu Miniman (@stu) and guest host Justin Warren (@jpwarren) of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during this year’s VMworld event in Las Vegas. (* Disclosure below.)

Science fact or science fiction?

A topic of debate around artificial intelligence has revolved around the displacement of human jobs by machines. Even if the argument is made that new types of jobs will be created, the question that remains is what the people working now should shift their focus toward. The increased value of hand-crafted, high-quality goods will offset the decrease in demand, according to Klein.

“The people who are really good at what it is they do will continue to have careers, and I think their careers will become more niche. Therefore, they will be able to demand a higher wage for it, like a specialist carpenter will be able to earn a much higher wage from fewer customers wanting really custom carpentry. … A big concept of the book is that we place a lot of value in the uniqueness of an object,” Klein said. 

When asked to distinguish between science fact and fiction around artificial intelligence and its ability to impact greater society, Klein explained that we are a long way from a true AI in the traditional sense.

“The problem is we have figured out a way to create a general purpose AI. There are a lot of parallels to the evolution of computing in general, because if you look at how computers were before we had general purpose operating systems like UNIX, every computer was built to do a very specific function. And that’s kind of what AI is right now,” Klein said. 

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of VMworld 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for VMworld 2017. Neither VMware Inc. nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE