A plethora of stories that cover the shifting landscape of technology moving into the future has been released lately, discussing how that could affect the way we approach a basic category of economic thrust: human capital.

A Financial Times report suggests that up to 47 percent of jobs, especially at the more rudimentary, “grunt work” levels, can be fully automated in the upcoming decades. This is an astonishing number, to be sure, and is bad news for many workers, ranging from waiters to accountants. The basic idea is that machines are far more capable than humans of achieving precision in tasks that require attention to detail, and with a larger emphasis on artificial intelligence in research and development budgets, these machines will also become more adept at mimicking “human cognition.”

The idea of such machines is not purely conjecture, nor is it science fiction. IBM’s Jeopardy-playing supercomputer, Watson,  has already shown remarkable applications to real-life situations and can be utilized extensively in medicine, law and other fields heavily reliant on deductive reasoning. It can process through data far more quickly than a human can and does not err in diagnoses as often as a person. This makes Watson an ideal attendant to a highly-trained doctor or a lawyer.

However, similar machines may not simply behave as sidekicks. Automating restaurant orders and delivering them to chefs can result in a complete overhaul of jobs in the dining industry, for instance. Manufacturing jobs can be replaced entirely by machines that can be far more efficient at producing material. It is plausible to replace workers entirely.

Bill Gates similarly threw caution to the winds when he echoed some of these beliefs. He also perceives a shift occurring in the near future, which means that many humans will be left out of work, at least under current political rules. There are really no laws protecting us from unemployment as a result of technology (at least, not in the way that it is described here).

Going forward, then, as this new wave of technology is set to arrive, we must be concerned with its implications. How can we make sure that we keep as many people employed as possible, while also maintaining a high level of efficiency in our activities?

We know that structural unemployment is a byproduct of technological innovation, and this has been a trend for as long as humanity has been in existence. But these trends have largely been sporadic, and technology’s growth has never been so stratospheric in scale. It is doubtful that we will be able to equip the low-skilled workers with enough training and education in time to replace their old jobs with new ones. In the event that we are unable to do so, what will become of these workers? Will they simply relegate them to being idle and to salvage survival through whatever savings they have?

I only hope we can also make some advances in technology to help us opt for intelligent decisions regarding these hazy landscapes.