The dust will take decades to settle on the key issue of precisely how much technology and artificial intelligence (AI) will displace human labour.

But it is already clear the coming decades will see a sizeable proportion of jobs worldwide threatened and substituted by automation, machine learning, or a combination of both.

It is increasingly apparent too that jobs commonly reckoned to be “safe” at present may in fact be candidates for an AI takeover, with many knowledge workers themselves candidates for displacement.

… Shashi Jayakumar is head of the Centre of Excellence for National Security and executive coordinator, Future Issues and Technology at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Eugene Goh is chief operating officer of a leading shift-worker hiring and management software startup based in Singapore.