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In recent years, Google’s autonomous cars have logged thousands of miles on American highways and IBM’s Watson trounced the best human Jeopardy! players. Digital technologies — with hardware, software, and networks at their core — will in the near future diagnose diseases more accurately than doctors can, apply enormous data sets to transform retailing, and accomplish many tasks once considered uniquely human.
After billions of dollars and 50 years of effort, researchers are finally cracking the code on artificial intelligence. As society stands on the cusp of unprecedented change, Jerry Kaplan unpacks the latest advances in robotics, machine learning, and perception powering systems that rival or exceed human capabilities. Driverless cars, robotic helpers, and intelligent agents that promote our interests have the potential to usher in a new age of affluence and leisure.
Leading innovation expert Alec Ross explains what's next for the world, mapping out the advances and stumbling blocks that will emerge in the next 10 years - for businesses, governments, and the global community - and how we can navigate them.
What are the jobs of the future? How many will there be? And who will have them? We might imagine - and hope - that today's industrial revolution will unfold like the last: even as some jobs are eliminated, more will be created to deal with the new innovations of a new era. In Rise of the Robots, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Martin Ford argues that this is absolutely not the case. As technology continues to accelerate and machines begin taking care of themselves, fewer people will be necessary.
We live in strange times. A machine plays the strategy game Go better than any human; upstarts like Apple and Google destroy industry stalwarts such as Nokia; ideas from the crowd are repeatedly more innovative than corporate research labs. MIT's Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson know what it takes to master this digital-powered shift: we must rethink the integration of minds and machines, of products and platforms, and of the core and the crowd.
How will artificial intelligence affect crime, war, justice, jobs, society, and our very sense of being human? The rise of AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology - and there's nobody better qualified or situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor who's helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial.
In recent years, Google’s autonomous cars have logged thousands of miles on American highways and IBM’s Watson trounced the best human Jeopardy! players. Digital technologies — with hardware, software, and networks at their core — will in the near future diagnose diseases more accurately than doctors can, apply enormous data sets to transform retailing, and accomplish many tasks once considered uniquely human.
After billions of dollars and 50 years of effort, researchers are finally cracking the code on artificial intelligence. As society stands on the cusp of unprecedented change, Jerry Kaplan unpacks the latest advances in robotics, machine learning, and perception powering systems that rival or exceed human capabilities. Driverless cars, robotic helpers, and intelligent agents that promote our interests have the potential to usher in a new age of affluence and leisure.
Leading innovation expert Alec Ross explains what's next for the world, mapping out the advances and stumbling blocks that will emerge in the next 10 years - for businesses, governments, and the global community - and how we can navigate them.
What are the jobs of the future? How many will there be? And who will have them? We might imagine - and hope - that today's industrial revolution will unfold like the last: even as some jobs are eliminated, more will be created to deal with the new innovations of a new era. In Rise of the Robots, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Martin Ford argues that this is absolutely not the case. As technology continues to accelerate and machines begin taking care of themselves, fewer people will be necessary.
We live in strange times. A machine plays the strategy game Go better than any human; upstarts like Apple and Google destroy industry stalwarts such as Nokia; ideas from the crowd are repeatedly more innovative than corporate research labs. MIT's Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson know what it takes to master this digital-powered shift: we must rethink the integration of minds and machines, of products and platforms, and of the core and the crowd.
How will artificial intelligence affect crime, war, justice, jobs, society, and our very sense of being human? The rise of AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology - and there's nobody better qualified or situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor who's helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial.
What to Do When Machines Do Everything is a guidebook to succeeding in the next generation of the digital economy. When systems running on artificial intelligence can drive our cars, diagnose medical patients, and manage our finances more effectively than humans, it raises profound questions on the future of work and how companies compete.
The future is now. Artificial "machine" intelligence is playing an ever-greater role in our society. We are already using cruise control in our cars and automatic checkout at the drugstore and are unable to live without our smartphones. The discussion around AI is largely polarized; people think either machines will solve all problems for everyone or they will lead us down a dark, dystopian path into total human irrelevance. Regardless of what you believe, the idea that we might bring forth intelligent creation can be intrinsically frightening.
Superintelligence asks the questions: What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? Will artificial agents save or destroy us? Nick Bostrom lays the foundation for understanding the future of humanity and intelligent life. The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. If machine brains surpassed human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become extremely powerful - possibly beyond our control.
Surviving AI is a concise, easy guide to what's coming, taking you through technological unemployment (the economic singularity) and the possible creation of a superintelligence (the technological singularity).
Much of what will happen in the next 30 years is inevitable, driven by technological trends that are already in motion. In this fascinating, provocative new book, Kevin Kelly provides an optimistic road map for the future, showing how the coming changes in our lives - from virtual reality in the home to an on-demand economy to artificial intelligence embedded in everything we manufacture - can be understood as the result of a few long-term accelerating forces.
Artificial Intelligence helps choose what books you buy, what movies you see, and even who you date. It puts the "smart" in your smartphone and soon it will drive your car. It makes most of the trades on Wall Street, and controls vital energy, water, and transportation infrastructure. But Artificial Intelligence can also threaten our existence. In as little as a decade, AI could match and then surpass human intelligence. Corporations and government agencies are pouring billions into achieving AI’s Holy Grail - human-level intelligence.
World-renowned economist Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, explains that we have an opportunity to shape the fourth industrial revolution, which will fundamentally alter how we live and work.
Under the aegis of machine learning in our data-driven machine age, computers are programming themselves and learning about - and solving - an extraordinary range of problems, from the mundane to the most daunting. Today it is machine learning programs that enable Amazon and Netflix to predict what users will like, Apple to power Siri's ability to understand voices, and Google to pilot cars.
Ray Dalio, one of the world's most successful investors and entrepreneurs, shares the unconventional principles that he's developed, refined, and used over the past 40 years to create unique results in both life and business - and which any person or organization can adopt to help achieve their goals.
For over three decades, the great inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most respected and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our future. In his classic The Age of Spiritual Machines, he argued that computers would soon rival the full range of human intelligence at its best. Now he examines the next step in this inexorable evolutionary process: the union of human and machine.
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are the four most influential companies on the planet. Just about everyone thinks they know how they got there. Just about everyone is wrong. For all that's been written about the Four over the last two decades, no one has captured their power and staggering success as insightfully as Scott Galloway. Instead of buying the myths these companies broadcast, Galloway asks fundamental questions.
This book predicts the decline of today's professions and describes the people and systems that will replace them. In an Internet society, according to Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind, we will neither need nor want doctors, teachers, accountants, architects, the clergy, consultants, lawyers, and many others to work as they did in the 20th century.
In a world of self-driving cars and big data, smart algorithms and Siri, we know that artificial intelligence is getting smarter every day. Though all these nifty devices and programs might make our lives easier, they're also well on their way to making "good" jobs obsolete. A computer winning Jeopardy might seem like a trivial, if impressive, feat, but the same technology is making paralegals redundant as it undertakes electronic discovery, and is soon to do the same for radiologists. And that, no doubt, will only be the beginning.
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?
The more Pollyannaish, or just simply uninformed, might imagine that this industrial revolution will unfold like the last: even as some jobs are eliminated, more will be created to deal with the new devices of a new era. In Rise of the Robots, Martin Ford argues that is absolutely not the case. Increasingly, machines will be able to take care of themselves, and fewer jobs will be necessary. The effects of this transition could be shattering. Unless we begin to radically reassess the fundamentals of how our economy works, we could have both an enormous population of the unemployed-the truck drivers, warehouse workers, cooks, lawyers, doctors, teachers, programmers, and many, many more, whose labors have been rendered superfluous by automated and intelligent machines.
If you could sum up Rise of the Robots in three words, what would they be?
Focus on creating value
What did you like best about this story?
This really makes you sit back and think. If (when) we have all this technology come on board I will make sure I am at the top of the food chain and not a cog in the wheel. This isn't the buggy whips makers protesting when the car came around. The disruption will be like the buggy whip makers (most of the middle class) seeing Google's automated car constructed by 3D printers and Uber already being in place rather than the Model T beginning to roll of the assembly line. The masses will be running for cover. The authors pitch a national minimum income is really the only solution with no wages for the mass of unemployed folks. Not politically popular but not many options. Very eye opening content.
Any additional comments?
Nope. Batten down the hatches and start making moves now to profit from this rather than be a victim.
16 of 16 people found this review helpful
Great thought provoking discussion of automation. However, it could have been shortened by a third. His ideas in the last chapter are really out there in terms of feasibility and logic. Well worth the listen though.
11 of 11 people found this review helpful
Hare the nasal sound of the narrator. First 75% is analysis, which is great. Did not like the conclusions that much. Overall a great book that sets you thinking.
11 of 13 people found this review helpful
It has a great start but falls off once the author starts making recommendations to fix the potential future issues. Seems like there is a lack of analysis within those chapters
10 of 12 people found this review helpful
While the book has a lot of good information, there were parts that were boring (too many facts and numbers) and parts that lacked focus (philosophical droning about how technology can create a dystopian society). During the Luddite Movement in the 19th century, people feared that machines would eliminate jobs. Yet here we are 200 years later, we enjoy the use of all kinds of machines. Instead of speculating on the range of possible futures, the author should have focused on an ideal future merging humans and technology and the factors needed to make that happen.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful
What disappointed you about Rise of the Robots?
I naively thought this book would be more about the details of new technology and what jobs will be replaced but at least 50% is about the economics of robotics and frankly, the author gets this wrong. I think most readers will not find this economics part much of a problem but as someone who studied economics for many years and worked in the financial industry and technology sector, there is deeply wrong conclusion the author makes:
The industries that introduce the most automation and replace the most jobs are the same industries that improve productively the most (since labor is almost invariably the most expensive part of any process). This is also the area of our lives which improve the most (except for the immediate quality of life decrease for the people who work in that industry when it becomes automated). For example, since the mechanization of textiles, the cost of clothes as a percentage of poor people's incomes has dropped ENORMOUSLY in the past 300 years. Even people living at subsistence levels in parts of Africa and Asia have more clothes at higher quality, with greater variety then anyone could have ever dreamed of in 1700. As productivity rises, the purchasing power of people's incomes must rise at a greater rate (since it cost less to produce a given good or service with the new process). Even if incomes fall, quality of life can still go up if purchasing power of the falling incomes is more than compensating. The greater the output of mankind, the more wealth overall. If technology causes the incomes of the very skilled to rise disproportionately, you can just raise taxes a bit on them and reduce taxes or even create a negative tax rate for the poor (so you report your income and instead of paying the government say 15%, the government sends you a check for 15%). There will always be jobs at some low wage because although robots might be highly efficient, they are still not free. Electricity, maintenance, materials costs, R&D costs, construction costs, sales taxes, etc. In a world where robots can make almost anything very cheaply, people just do the things they are comparatively good at (and unless robots become people, these areas will always exist). By definition, if robots and people are different, they will have different capacities and different comparative strengths. People will just move to "design" and other creative jobs. The world does quite well without people operating our telephone switchboards (now done by software) and it will get along even better when no one has to make hamburgers or sew t-shirts. Hamburgers will be much cheaper and so will t-shirts. People will design new, even tastier hamburgers and new, even cooler t-shirts but robots will be making them.
The guaranteed income can be recipe for disaster and there are many people in this world who would just stay home to have sex, do drugs, and make babies. Over time this group would increase as the genes for laziness and baby making become more prevalent in society and other people realize they can do this a well (and don't like the idea of free-loaders having all the fun). I think its better if you make some kind of productive work a requirement via a negative tax rate if necessary. This way everyone contributes unless they are truly unable (disabled) or in school (which should be very cheap).
Ultimately, this is a complicated topic so I don't fault the author too much but I think there is clearly a flaw in the economic logic. I agree information technology is a general purpose technology as is narrow artificial intelligence. There have been other general purpose technologies however, and the main difference is that they affect many more areas of our lives and improve the world to much greater degree. These include the wheel, writing, electricity, democracy, the corporation, property rights, mathematics, etc. All these things have made our lives better on average while changing the returns to different types of labor and capital intensity of different industries. Robotics is just another (but potentially more profound and effective) way of creating what everyone wants. Efficiency has been the name of the game since the first technologies perhaps more than 1 million years ago in the form of fire and sharp stones. Only increasing efficiently will make tomorrow better than today. Just maximize on efficiently and then tax appropriately to spread out the returns in a reasonable way.
General AI is whole other ball game. This is the equivalent of an alien coming to earth. You might not even have to worry about he economy or jobs at that point. Presumably, this AI could become very powerful and it will decide the fate of humanity, not humanity. Our very existence will depended upon what this AI decides to do with us.
What could Martin Ford have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?
Please address the flaw in economic thinking.
Which scene was your favorite?
When he talks about all the new robots that will do people's jobs. This was quite interesting.
If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Rise of the Robots?
Cut down the economics sections and focus on the robotic technologies.
75 of 107 people found this review helpful
The first few chapters of this book are interesting. However, the author than goes on a rant about his bent on income inequality and tax policy. Unfortunately, the author delves into an area of personal philosophy in which he simply opines rather than providing useful information.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
This book does a great job of laying out the framework of the future. A future we really have to start thinking about.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful
Thorough and sober analysis. A must read for anyone interested in jobs and the future
5 of 8 people found this review helpful
The best book so far on technological unemployment. It provides a measured, thoughtful rebuttal to everyone who naively imagines automation will continue to create more jobs than it displaces
5 of 8 people found this review helpful