Uncovering the Impact of Automation: How Technology Could Lead to a Jobless Future

TJC: Increasing automation will undoubtedly impact all of to a greater or lesser degree and not just through increasing mobile phone apps and automated online customer support lines instead of real people! His ideas on how industries, jobs and people will be differently affected are generally well presented and supported. His busts the myth that the robots will be after the low skill low paid jobs and demonstrates that the real gains come from replacing more expensive employees undertaking routine and replicable tasks.

Some of his solutions are the rather familiar solutions to all woes - tax success and capital and give to others - but still have some merit. It’s just that they are not as well presented or supported and increase existing problems.

As an example, the idea of a guaranteed basic income to all adults seems like a good one and in many ways Universal Credit in the UK is designed to be something like that (one benefit rather than many, paid arrears just like workers’ pay etc). But Ford then goes on to say you would reward those with an education more (why and what education would merit it), those with private pension would be excluded (why, because they had...

United Kingdom on Jul 07, 2022

Parsec: RISE OF THE ROBOTS war für mich keine unbedingt angenehme, aber hochspannende und schlichtweg wichtige Lektüre.

Wer meint, dass der “Aufstieg der Roboter” ein reines Science Fiction Szenario ist, hat schlichtweg in den letzten Jahrzehnten nicht aufgepasst, denn dass die Automatisierung in fast allen Bereichen schon längst im vollen Gang ist und dass das Zenit dieser Entwicklung noch längst nicht erreicht ist dürfte mittlerweile kaum zu übersehender Fakt sein.

All das hat sicherlich auch guten Seiten – aber eben auch durchaus bedrohliche Aspekte.
Für die Zukunft der Arbeit bedeutet dieser Trend, dass im 21. Jahrhundert natürlich immer mehr Menschen auf der Erde leben, für die es aber aufgrund der fortschreitenden Automatisierung immer weniger Jobs geben wird.

Hinzu kommt, dass durch die Automatisierung nicht nur ganze Branchen im „ungelernten Bereich“ wegfallen, sondern auch vermeintlich spezialisierte und hochqualifizierte Berufe hiervon mehr und mehr betroffen werden – denn auch Arbeiten, welche bislang von beispielsweise Analysten, Juristen, Ingenieuren, Medizinern, Programmierern, Controllern und ähnlich qualifizierten Personen...

Germany on Aug 07, 2018

Abacus: Martin Ford is among the technologists who have warned that technology is and will increasingly displace human beings across all employment sectors. This phenomenon will threaten the structural foundation of our capitalist economies fueled by consumer spending (that accounts for close to 70% of GDP in the US).

His vision regarding the exponential growth of technology (Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Cloud computing, Internet and mobile apps, robots) is not all that different than the vision of Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee as they expressed within their own two books on the subject: “Race Against The Machine” and “The Second Machine.”

Martin Ford puts more weight into what he calls the seven deadly trends:
1) Stagnant wages;
2) Declining share of GDP going to labor and rising share going to corporate profits;
3) Declining labor force participation rate;
4) Diminishing job creation, lengthening jobless recoveries, and soaring long-term unemployment;
5) Soaring inequality;
6) Declining incomes and underemployment for recent college graduates; and
7) Polarization and part-time jobs.

Brynjolfsson and McAfee also identified the...

United States on May 01, 2017

Peter de Toma sen.: “The Rise of the Robots – Technology and the Threat of Mass Unemployment” is a very important and interesting book. Among the books short listed for the best business book award in 2015 it is the right choice.
The subtitle describes the content: “Technology and the Threat of Mass Unemployment.

Martin Ford, founder of a Silicon Valley-based software development firm, has over twenty-five years of experience in computer design and software development. With his background as IT expert he describes significant risks of mass unemployment by progressing implementation of information technology and fast growing artificial intelligence eliminating whole job categories. He emphasizes the double role of the employed workforce as workers as well as consumers: increasing unemployment growing into mass unemployment would hit significantly our societies and economies.

Readers who study this book and follow Ford’s analysis must come to the conclusion that he describes our economic system as being heavily affected by the risks of malignant cancer: mass unemployment and collapse of consumption.

Martin Ford paints a pretty bleak picture, a kind of writing on the...

Germany on Feb 03, 2016

Fresh and Felicia: We've said it before, and it never happened. We've said "but this time is different," and it really wasn't. But this time - I think we're all in trouble, and I'm not smart enough to figure out how to fix this problem. I’m always looking for warning signs to protect my flock. No one can think of everything, but a little imagination combined with a collective intelligence can help formulate very effective hypotheses. My vision of the future for our children is quite dark and dysfunctional, as every prediction of a future generation has been since predicting the future has been a thing. With each successive implementation of technology, societies in general require less hard work and physical labor to survive and prosper. And for the first time ever, humans may no longer be required to think and innovate. We already have trained machines to do that for us. The hair on the back of Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk’s necks is standing at attention at this premise.

Here’s the thing. Technology is amazing. It has saved countless lives and allowed most of the developed world to achieve an almost ideal standard of living. Cheap and plentiful food. Widely available medical...

United States on Jan 29, 2016

tallmanbaby: Martin Ford is smart as a tack, this book straddles economics, technology and politics with confidence, to set out the risk of information technology taking away a substantial chunk of the traditional middle class jobs that are currently available, accelerating social inequality.

The book starts strongly, he seems to have read everything, and lobs in interesting anecdotes, and statistics to put forward his arguments. The book is reasonably accessible, but a few more explanations would make it an easier read. He also uses thought experiments, little science fiction scenarios to illustrate his points, with varying degrees of success.

He astutely punctures a considerable volume of well meaning TED Talk style puff-ery, such as MOOCs to replace universities, or just more education as an easy policy solution. I would have preferred a less reverential approach to the health profession, which seems hopelessly outdated, and lacking a true customer focus.

Personally I was half way through the book before I found anything that I particularly disagreed with, he appeared to be suggesting that high levels of household debt early this century were related to consumer...

United Kingdom on Dec 28, 2015

Alex Reid: Can we really dispute the fact that technology is creating more automation in the workplace? The central hypothesis of this well researched and well presented book is that mass unemployment & economic decline as a result of automation are a certainty unless some radical policy changes are made.

As a software engineer and not an economist, I found Martin Ford's writing style refreshing. Too often books of this type get ground down in theory. However, with "Rise of the robots" Martin presents his points in a simple & logical form. The opening chapter gets right down to business & sets out the marco trends that are explored in more detail in later chapters. Be prepared! Martin spares no punches in his analysis of the impact that automation in its different guises will have on employment.

While this may seem a little cliched, I found myself at certain points during the booking pausing to consider tor implications of a point he had just made only for him to echo my thoughts in the next paragraph. Very much a case of being on the same wavelength as him.

As a veteran of the technology industry, it's fair to say that I read the book with a slight bias. It...

United Kingdom on Dec 05, 2015