Book Review: Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

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Book Review: Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future
(Last Updated On: )We are in so much trouble. After doing a lot of reading about robotics and artificial intelligence, I became concerned about our future. I could foresee that we are going to have a diminishing workforce. After reading Martin Ford’s Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, this concern changed into panic. Ford’s predictions on the future of the workforce does not bode well for the workers. The move to automation will be a formidable disruption.

In Rise of the Robots, Ford made a compelling argument that our relationship with automation (robots and artificial intelligence) has shifted.

“That shift will ultimately challenge one of our most basic assumptions about technology: that machines are tools that increase the productivity of workers. Instead, machines themselves are turning into workers, and the line between the capability of labor and capital  is blurring as never before” (Ford, 2015, p. xii).

Not only are lower-skilled and lower-paying jobs at risk but also high-paying white-collar jobs. We have already seen a stagnation of wages. This is due in part to the increased automation of work. More can be done with less human workers. If the workers want higher pay, they may initially receive it, however, company owners will look to automate the positions whenever possible.

Rise of the Robots is 334 pages long and is well researched. Ford covered his topic in ten chapters:

  • The automation wave
  • Is this time different?
  • Information technology: An unprecedented force for disruption
  • White-collar jobs at risk
  • Transforming higher education
  • The health care challenge
  • Technologies and industries of the future
  • Consumers, limits to growth… and crisis?
  • Super-intelligence and the singularity
  • Toward a new economic paradigm

When I did a search in Google restricted to news articles on the term “automation robotics artificial intelligence,” Google presented me with 212,000 articles. These articles touched upon many of the issues that Ford presented in his book.  

The path to automation is steadily increasing speed. We have certainly seen the progress to automate industrial jobs. In the cross hairs are other jobs such as those requiring drivers. Self-driving cars are on the near horizon. This will affect taxi drivers, bus drivers, and truck drivers. As Ford pointed out, we are already seeing the effects that technology has had on the industry. At one time, a driver had to memorize every street in the city. The skill level was lowered when a GPS made it easy for any driver to deliver a customer. We are now moving to self driving cars.

Retailers are also working feverishly to automate their services from point of sale to delivery of products. Grocery stores are experiment with robots that take inventory of shelves at night. We already have self-checkout systems. Within the fast food industry, franchises are looking to eliminate the fast food worker by automating all tasks from food preparation to ordering.

Ford dedicated one chapter to education. Naturally, I found this chapter to be quite interesting. It aligned what I was already thinking about the topic. Technology is beginning to have a disruptive effect on education. Because one has the world’s knowledge in one’s hand, education has to be something more. According to Ford,

“The very fact that schools like Harvard and Stanford are willing to give that education away for free is evidence that these institutions are primarily in the business of conveying credentials rather than knowledge” (Ford, 2015, p. 142).

He was talking about the proliferation of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs). But that is not the only threat. Everywhere I look, entrepreneurs are creating courses to teach their systems and processes. They are making money hand over fist and bypassing higher education.

There is also a significant push to create adaptive learning programs to help teach content to learners. The big question is what happens to all the higher education workers once content has been created and is able to be distributed at scale? Is this what the mega-universities are working on? Will they then become the Amazon of higher education?

The greatest question that Ford asked in his book was what do we do with the unemployed or underemployed workforce. Who will buy the products that all the automated workforce creates? If people are not receiving a paycheck, how will they purchase goods? As a result, if no one can purchase goods, how will the company make a profit? These are certainly unintended consequences of automation.

Rise of the Robots is a fascinating book that has given me a lot to think about. This has been a topic that I have been thinking about regularly. This book along with a couple of others have prompted me to raise this concern with others. If you are interested in seeing the future, I would encourage you to read it.

Additional Reading

Photo by Franck V. on Unsplash

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