The important point to be made is that the "simpler" tasks will be automated early, pushing human required labour to generally be smarter and better educated.
There are only so many people for any required value of "smart".
The historical human computers in the article required less education and base intelligence than the mathematicians that are employed today.*
Sooner or later a significant segment of the population will simply not be able to train to most tasks that still require human labour. And slowly (or quickly) that bar will rise.
When I hire and train people I simply need a certain baseline mental capacity, otherwise they will never get good enough to keep, no matter how long they train.
*) Note though that this does not mean they necessarily were less intelligent than the modern work force.
Well made point, and I could be wrong. I assume you refer to the automation inroads into accounting, legal, organisation tracking (lower management) etc. I personally see those as specific low hanging fruit since they are highly rule based.
But soon we will reach strong automation on diverse simple manual labour, transportation, stocking/handling, etc. Even if automation just manages to handle 90% of everyday tasks it will crash enormous employment numbers, far beyond what we see today in accounting, legal, etc.
There are only so many people for any required value of "smart". The historical human computers in the article required less education and base intelligence than the mathematicians that are employed today.*
Sooner or later a significant segment of the population will simply not be able to train to most tasks that still require human labour. And slowly (or quickly) that bar will rise. When I hire and train people I simply need a certain baseline mental capacity, otherwise they will never get good enough to keep, no matter how long they train.
*) Note though that this does not mean they necessarily were less intelligent than the modern work force.