To fully grasp the magnitude of the changes that are coming, consider this example: It is unlikely that children under the age of 5 will ever drive a car. The reason: the advent of self-driving automobiles. Such cars now exist. Google’s test vehicles have cumulatively driven nearly 1 million miles with no accidents, and they are legal for street use in five states. They’re already permitted on every major highway in the United Kingdom. Self-driving cars means you’ll never park a car again, run errands, fuel up or shuttle kids to soccer practice. Your car will do all that for you. But what happens to taxi drivers? Forget Uber. Just as DVDs wiped out videocassettes, only to themselves be crushed by Netflix, self-driving cars will cause Uber—currently accused of threatening the livelihoods of cabbies—to itself become extinct.
Not only will taxi drivers be gone, so too will truck drivers. And truck stops. With no human drivers making long-haul trips, no greasy-spoon joints will be needed. Also out of work: parking-meter readers, tollbooth operators, parking garage attendants and restaurant/hotel valets. While you’re at it, say goodbye to chiropractors; no more auto accidents means far fewer back injuries—a major source of work for them.
In fact, say goodbye to the entire “crash economy.” Hospital emergency rooms will have far fewer patients (also fewer transplantable organs, since car-crash victims are a major harvesting source); the entire automobile insurance industry might disappear; and muni bonds are at risk when thousands of counties suffer massive declines in revenue because police officers can’t issue citations for traffic violations anymore (speeding tickets alone generate $6.2 billion in annual revenue for local governments, according to the National Highway Safety Administration).
How many millions of people will be thrown out of work because of this one innovation? And whom do you sue when something goes wrong, the manufacturer of the vehicle or the person who owns it?
One more question: What advice do you plan to give to your clients who are faced with unemployment after the careers they trained for and worked in for decades are eliminated by exponential technologies? If you don’t have an answer, they’ll hire an advisor who does.
Lest you think nothing good can come of automated autos, consider these statistics from the Rand Corporation: Self-driving vehicles will virtually eliminate the 5.3 million auto crashes suffered in the U.S. annually. Those crashes cause 2.2 million injuries and 32,000 fatalities every year; car accidents are the No. 1 killer of adults ages 15-29 and the No. 2 killer of children ages 5-14. Americans spend $157 billion on auto insurance (1.5% of GDP), and the losses due to property damage, lost wages, lost household production, medical and legal costs, vocational rehabilitation expenses and workplace costs total 3.7% of our nation’s GDP. For context, that’s equal to two-thirds of the entire federal defense budget.
Eliminating accidents also sharply reduces traffic congestion. Time spent in a car will thus drop while productivity rises, because you can work instead of watching the road. Fuel economy goes up and pollution goes down, all while we triple road capacity.
And pay attention to real estate! It will undergo a massive renaissance, because 31% of city space in our country is currently used for parking. This land will be turned into parks, buildings and other public spaces that will transform both urban and suburban life. And we haven’t even talked about how those with disabilities will enjoy newfound independence; they will no longer be dependent on others for transportation, and they will have greater access to essential services and economic opportunity.
I hope you’re beginning to get a sense of how disruptive these changes may be. Indeed, exponential technologies will radically reshape our world, thanks to emerging and innovative developments in the areas of big data and analytics, nanotechnology, medicine and neuroscience, computer systems, energy and environmental systems, robotics, 3-D printing, bioinformatics and financial services innovation.
Here are some ways our profession will be changed:
College planning. Thanks to MOOCs (massively open online courses), higher education is becoming free. President Obama has proposed making community college free; in Tennessee it already is. Every class at MIT is available free online, and the Georgia Institute of Technology offers a master’s degree in information sciences for just $7,000 to online students. It costs $40,000 if you attend on campus. If college degrees will be virtually free within the next decade, will we need to keep recommending that clients establish 529 plans?
Longer life spans. Scientists have learned that aging is a disease; it’s not biologically inherent to life. So, as our body parts wear out, we’ll replace them. We already insert knees, hips, hearts, kidneys, livers and lungs into people. Futurists believe that the first person to reach age 150 has already been born, and that life spans eventually will stretch well beyond that. Best of all, aging itself will be reversed—meaning you will be 90 years old but have the body of a 45-year-old. Imagine how your advice on retirement planning, estate planning and long-term care will have to change.
Estate planning. What will longer life spans mean for our estate-planning advice? What about marriage? I’m not sure every relationship is sustainable for 100 years. Imagine the implications for society—and our industry.