BARCELONA—In 30 years, your shoes will be smarter than you.

That’s not meant to be an insult but rather what Masayoshi Son believes will be the case as robots outnumber humans and exceed their intelligence in just three decades.

Founder & and CEO of SoftBank Group, Masayoshi Son, speaks during a keynote speech at the Mobile ...more

LLUIS GENELLUIS GENE/AFP/Getty Images

The chairman and CEO of Japan’s SoftBank Group outlined his vision of the future during remarks made on stage at the Mobile World Congress tech conference underway this week in Barcelona.

“One of the chips in our shoes in the next 30 years will be smarter than our brain. We will be less than our shoes. And we are stepping on them,” Son chuckled.

Son was talking up the concept of “singularity,” that is when the artificial intelligence built into computers, connected Internet of Things objects and the cloud will surpass that of the human brain.

As robots gain that same level of intelligence, the societal impact is likely to be profound. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban recently tweeted that "Automation is going to cause unemployment and we need to prepare for it." And Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates recently said in an interview that robots that take over a job formerly done by a real live person should be taxed at the same level as that human.

Softbank's Son notes that today, an average IQ for a person is around 100.  If you’re an Einstein or Da Vinci your IQ is around 200 mark, and you’re considered a genius.

In contrast, Son believes AI-infused computers will eventually have an IQ of 10,000.

“This burst of superintelligence,” he says, “is going to become a reality.” And this intelligence will make its way into all sorts of IOT devices, robots, cars and up in the cloud.