Takumi: A 60,000 Hour Story On the Survival of Human Craft (2018)

This 50 minute documentary is edited from the full 60,000 hour version. There is a popular theory that it takes at least 10,000 hours of focused practice for a human to become expert in any field. But in Japan, there are craftspeople who go far beyond this to reach a special kind of mastery. These people are called Takumi and they devote 60,000 hours to their craft. That's 8 hours a day, 240 days a year, for over 30 years. It's an almost superhuman level of dedication. To a life of repetition and no shortcuts. Most of us will never reach such heights. But what about machines? Artificial Intelligence is no longer science fiction; it is in our household appliances, the phones in our pockets. It is learning, improving and calculating at speeds way beyond human capability. It is developing so rapidly that by 2050 machines will outperform humans in virtually every field. This film asks the question: Will human craft disappear as artificial intelligence reaches beyond our limits? Narrated by former director of the National Gallery and British Museum, and globally renowned author and broadcaster Neil MacGregor.