Elves Face Unprecedented Threat From Artificial Intelligence

My daughter had been hounding me for days to mail Santa Claus her Christmas list, but I kept putting it off. Then this week, she had a change of heart and told me it’s OK if we wait until the last minute, because “most of the toys are made by machines, and the elves just have to turn them on.”

Even a five year old, it seems, understands how modern manufacturing has changed, and her insight got me thinking about the future of elf jobs. With advances in automation and machine-learning, elf technology is getting really good. Engineers are focusing their efforts on designing “the machine that builds the machine,” promising to spit out toys as fast as bubbles from a bubble machine. But where will that leave elves who've spent generations pounding out toys in the workshop?