Kerby Anderson
Will artificial intelligence take your job? That is a question that John Stossel asks in a recent video. He says the media warns, “Artificial intelligence will replace millions of jobs.” He shows you Teamsters protesting the use of self-driving cars because they will replace taxi drivers.
In previous commentaries, I have talked about how technology can be disruptive to society. But the long-term impact isn’t as bad as fearmongers would suggest. Jay Richards is the author of the book The Human Advantage: The Future of American Work in an Age of Smart Machines. He writes about the impact of robots and acknowledges that the coming disruption could be as abrupt as the Industrial Revolution.
But he and John Stossel point to history to dismiss many of the concerns. For example, if it is true that technology leads to permanent unemployment of the masses, the history of the last few centuries would be a history of joblessness. That is not true.
Both point to the fact that more than 90 percent of America’s workers once worked on farms. Better farm equipment replaced many of those jobs and now one percent work on farms. John Stossel reminds us that “There were once half a million typists in America. Nearly all those jobs are gone.” Also, there were “thousands of phone and elevator operator jobs.”
Many “bank tellers were replaced by ATM machines and online banking. Video rental stores were killed by streaming services.” In nearly every industry, you can find examples of how technology resulted in lost jobs. But there was no major surge in unemployment decades later. People found other jobs in such fields as education, hospitality, and health care.
Technological change can be disruptive, but we need only look to history to see how society usually benefits from new technologies.

Kerby Anderson
We face significant challenges in this nation. Many of the challenges go back to the 3D’s: disinformation, deception, and discernment. Some of the false information is being spread by people who don’t know the truth. Much more is deliberately deceptive, and that’s why I encourage people to read the new book by Pastor Jack Hibbs.
Living in the Daze of Deception catalogs the deception taking place inside the church and in the society at large. Ten chapters help us recognize deception, and two concluding chapters talk about standing for truth. We need to be prepared. Jesus warned his disciples, “Take heed that no one deceives you” (Matthew 24:4).
When he was on my radio program, we talked about the sources of deception. That includes both progressive education and social media. He writes about churches that are not preparing its members to discern truth from error. One section talks about “amusing the church to death.” That recalls the book by Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Many pastors fail to teach God’s Word and promote a theology of “easy believeism.”
We also talked about how words have been redefined. Marriage has been redefined. Gender and sexuality have been redefined. His chapter on “The New Tolerance” reminds us that even the word tolerance has been redefined. I referred to that as the “Princess Bride Myth” – “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
He calls for us to scrutinize the teachings of religious leaders. And he warns us of the growing influence of deceivers in business, education, and the media. We will need biblical discernment in this changing world. That is why I recommend his book so you will not be deceived.