He did show up, albeit a little late (he was waiting for some data from a talk he gave earlier in the day so he could update his slideshow!).
A lot of the talk went over my head. I think the main gist was that we can't stop progress, so shouldn't try, but that there will always be a place for human intervention because computers / robots will never have intuition. An example he gave was the advanced chess match of ten or so years ago, where a couple of grandmasters played a match against each other in which they were allowed to consult a computer program at any point in the game. My memory of this match is that the winner took the computer program's advice almost all the time, whereas the loser just used it to blundercheck!
I guess I was little disappointed that he didn't address something which has always bothered me: With all the advances in technology, computers and robots can do many things more efficiently and to a higher standard than humans can do. This means, for example, that entire factories of workers can be replaced by a suite of robots and a couple dozen people controlling them. So what are the factory workers supposed to do? There may always be a place for the lucky (cleverest? best educated?) few who write the programs and design the robots, but that still means that a huge percentage of the workforce is left without any real jobs.
Perhaps in the future, 99% of people won't have jobs at all and they'll spend all their time watching TV and playing chess on the internet. To be honest I guess most people would be happy with that.
