Rise of the Robots

Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

No cover

Martin Ford: Rise of the Robots (2016, Basic Books)

paperback, 368 pages

Published July 12, 2016 by Basic Books.

ISBN:
978-0-465-09753-1
Copied ISBN!

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (9 reviews)

Examines the effects of accelerating technology on the economic system.

"In Silicon Valley the phrase "disruptive technology" is tossed around on a casual basis. No one doubts that technology has the power to devastate entire industries and upend various sectors of the job market. But Rise of the Robots asks a bigger question: Can accelerating technology disrupt our entire economic system to the point where a fundamental restructuring is required? Companies like Facebook and YouTube may only need a handful of employees to achieve enormous valuations, but what will be the fate of those of us not lucky or smart enough to have gotten into the great shift from human labor to computation?"--

7 editions

Review of 'Rise of the Robots' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

This is a fairly thorough coverage of the displacement of human labourers by robots or AI software. Although there is some gee-whiz over-enthusiasm for the technology, it is more realistic than some I have read and it rightly covers more economics than the details of the technology. If you are reasonably up-to-date on the technology, you may learn a lot about the economic context and vice versa.
As a technologist, I found it not too far from accurate except that I found many of the explanations by analogy wasted far to much time explaining the thing the technology was analogous to. If you don't understand that thing, a direct explanation is just as effective. And the analogies were often weak.
I've spent a fair bit of time reading economics too, but there were some very helpful statistical details in here from my point of view. For example, about correlations between …

Review of 'Rise of the Robots' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

A robust, evidence-based journey through the key arcs of the rise of technology, in particular robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, couple with major labour market disruption and stagnation. My only criticism of this engaging, accessible and well argued tome is that it offers only one broad solution to the problems articulated - universal income, and slight variations thereof.

avatar for Edward

rated it

4 stars
avatar for ngs

rated it

4 stars
avatar for michaelmrak

rated it

4 stars
avatar for Vincent

rated it

3 stars
avatar for NachoNatto

rated it

5 stars
avatar for jt196

rated it

4 stars