In 1900, 41% of American workers were employed in the agricultural sector. By 2000, this figure had fallen to 2% (Autor, 2015). This is not because the American diet has become more frugal – quite the opposite.

The replacement of stagecoaches by trains, sailboats by motorboats or hoes by motorised vehicles was based on technologies that promoted mechanised automation. Thus, for example, the mass production of the automobile industry has all but eliminated the demand for many professions who made products for horses, such as blacksmiths and haymakers. The technological innovations introduced into the workplace are designed to reduce labour, especially in repetitive and easily codifiable tasks.

Which professions are threatened by automation? Is job polarisation limited by Polanyi's paradox? Polanyi's paradox states that «we know more than we can say», making it very difficult to explain the rules and procedures of tasks that humans perform tacitly and effortlessly.

After all, Google needed 16,000 computers to recognise an image of a cat (New York Times, 2012). Furthermore, self-driving cars are nothing more than a kind of train that runs on invisible rails – digital maps.