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A review by emmanuelbg
Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future by Martin Ford
4.0
The topic of AI is one that aesthetically displeases me a lot. I hate talking about, and the sight of others babbling excitedly about it induces a disgust response in me. Yet, it can't be ignored anymore. Especially in relation to the economy, and the future of employment.
This book is fear-inducing, to say the least. The author doesn't try to make it so, I suppose it's just the natural byproduct of the possibility at hand. We are talking about 10-20% unemployment at best, total catastrophe at worst.
The jobs simply aren't being created anymore. This is a problem which has affected America since the 2000's. There's stagnant wages, less labor participation rates (especially in young men), less jobs created (the idea that automation ends up creating new jobs is severely faulty). The middle class as we know it is soon to be a thing of the past.
People keep repeating the mantra of "just get more education", "just learn to use the AI", etc. It doesn't work like that, we are hitting the upper limit of how much you can over-educate a population. Likewise, any AI collaboration with humans ought to be short lived, since you are training your replacement, after all.
What happens later? The author can't provide a conclusive answer. Nobody can, really. Inequality, absolutely no jobs being created appears to be a recipe for disaster and political instability. UBI isn't a convincing answer for me, I believe it can easily be used to extort dissident figures into compliance. There just doesn't seem a way out of this... It's difficult to blame us zoomers for the lack of vitality this generation has. What ought we fight for? What's the end goal here? At this point I'm just rambling.
This book does it's job amazingly well. A great survey of the situation, the causes and the possible outlooks. I don't rate it 5 starts simply because there's 3 chapters in the middle which are mostly redundant.
This book is fear-inducing, to say the least. The author doesn't try to make it so, I suppose it's just the natural byproduct of the possibility at hand. We are talking about 10-20% unemployment at best, total catastrophe at worst.
The jobs simply aren't being created anymore. This is a problem which has affected America since the 2000's. There's stagnant wages, less labor participation rates (especially in young men), less jobs created (the idea that automation ends up creating new jobs is severely faulty). The middle class as we know it is soon to be a thing of the past.
People keep repeating the mantra of "just get more education", "just learn to use the AI", etc. It doesn't work like that, we are hitting the upper limit of how much you can over-educate a population. Likewise, any AI collaboration with humans ought to be short lived, since you are training your replacement, after all.
What happens later? The author can't provide a conclusive answer. Nobody can, really. Inequality, absolutely no jobs being created appears to be a recipe for disaster and political instability. UBI isn't a convincing answer for me, I believe it can easily be used to extort dissident figures into compliance. There just doesn't seem a way out of this... It's difficult to blame us zoomers for the lack of vitality this generation has. What ought we fight for? What's the end goal here? At this point I'm just rambling.
This book does it's job amazingly well. A great survey of the situation, the causes and the possible outlooks. I don't rate it 5 starts simply because there's 3 chapters in the middle which are mostly redundant.