Rise of the Robots

Rise of the Robots: How Far Will They Go?

 

The full title is Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future by Martin Ford (Basic Books). I will start with a super short review:

• The book would be better if the title included the word “robotification.”
• I didn’t completely enjoy the book. It’s sort of depressing to think about the future in cases where robots dominate.
• Overall, the book was well written with interesting stories about both business and technology.
• Some parts of the book seemed to go off into tangent stories that didn’t interest me.
• The last chapter was the best.

Now for some more partially random comments.
I think that we all agree that robots are doing things that humans used to do. The question remains: how far will they go? Will robots eventually be able to do everything that a human could do? The answer depends on artificial intelligence—real intelligence, not just smart robots but robots that can learn and critically think. Some will say that AI is just like practical fusion—it’s in the near future and always will be. I think the problem is that if a computer did start becoming intelligent, it could improve at a very rapid pace. We will just have to wait and see what really happens.

In the book, Martin Ford talks about the effect of robots on the economy. Reading a book like this reminds me that it seems pretty magical that our economy works at all. Once you add robots into the mix, they start doing jobs but they don’t consume things that would support even more jobs. No, robots just do their job (I’m talking about robots, not AI robots—they might do their job AND take over the world).

One possible solution to the robot-job problem would be a Basic Income. The idea is that everyone gets some income that is not tied to a particular job. If this income is enough to live on, humans would be able to function along with the robots. Yes, the devil is in the details but it seems like it might help us into a transition into the robotic future. Of course some other people say that intelligent robots of the future are only a problem if we hold onto capitalism.

Finally, it think the author goes over many other situations in which robots have had or will have a significant impact—education is one such example.  Hopefully we can work out this whole robotification thing so that we can all benefit in the future.

Note: This review is based on a complimentary copy of Rise of the Robots that I received from the publisher.

Source : wired