At best automation will be extremely disruptive, at worst it will be catastrophic

Stories about the potential automation of the workforce should raise the hairs on the back of your neck. It's easy to dismiss the threat because workers have always been able to adjust to changing technology.

What's ignored is that it has often been a painful process with generations left behind. Second, the path of automation has been from the agricultural sector, to the industrial sector and now to the service sector. After that, there is nothing left unless we all go to work in the arts.

Last year Bill Gates said automation threatens every worker. "I don't think people have that in their mental model," he said.

I'm sure economists don't have it in their models either.

The WSJ explores some of the latest insights from MIT and other people on the cutting edge of what robots will soon be able to do.

Economist Erik Brynjolfsson had long dismissed fears that automation would soon devour jobs ... "Something had changed," Mr. Brynjolfsson said, recalling his astonishment at machines navigating the many unpredictable moments that face drivers.

The big question will be how workers co-exist with machines and in a purely capitalist model, it's easy to see how anyone who doesn't own the machines will be left far behind.

A survey of economists showed 88% either agreed or strongly agreed that automation has never historically led to reduced U.S. employment but even if that's true in the coming decades, there will be other effects.

Wage inflation is already a major story and when workers are negotiating with management who can replace them with a robot, they will have no leverage.