London’s black cab drivers are watching technology sweep away their livelihoods. The loss they feel is growing familiar across other professions. “I’m upset because what I had to go through now comes on your phone,” Mick Smith, a London cab driver for 28 years, told CNET. “It’s not about competition—it’s about going through the same process.” It’s an understandable reaction but also unrealistic. AI has made that process unnecessary. Even crueler, the knowledge Smith built up of London’s streets isn’t useful for much of anything else.

This is happening to more and more professions. Goldman Sachs and many of the biggest hedge funds are all switching on AI-driven systems that can foresee market trends and make trades better than humans. One Goldman Sachs trading office has been whittled from 600 people to two. AI can read X-rays better than radiologists. A great deal of the work done by lawyers is heading for the AI trash bin. Like the Knowledge, these are professions that require loading up your head with a lot of data and rules, and then mostly just executing. AI can do that now.