Martin Ford (1)

The Star Trek replicator has long been a dream of humanity - completely automated provision of the means of subsistence, with the potential to eliminate unprecedented amounts of drudgery. Far from everyone being freed to pursue their dreams of becoming starship captains, though, it's entirely possible that the current dramatic increase in automation will simply put humans out of work, whether those humans are low-wage burger-flippers, manufacturing workers at home or offshore, or white-shoe corporate lawyers. Ford looks at how the immense transformation of the global economy is both helping and hurting workers, detouring into some of the more outlandish science fiction possibilities of automation, before settling on what increasingly appears like the only viable solution to a sufficiently mechanized economy: a guaranteed income that ensures everyone shares in the coming bounty.… (meer)

The Ultimate Disruptive Technology
Various voices are beginning to sound the alarm concerning the advent of the most disruptive technology yet to come. The technologies that comprise AI-enhanced automation pose a severe risk to the ages-old paradigm of distributing purchasing power on a basis of the value of labor provided. Martin Ford’s “Rise of the Robots,” is certainly one of the more cogent and compelling of these alarms. He explains many of the ways automation is poised to intrude into or possibly obviate traditional areas of labor and even professions. It is time to heed these voices and begin a national or even global discussion on how we will manage the economic, sociological, and societal impacts arriving with the deployment of these technologies.
General artificial intelligence may or may not be realized in the near term. However, narrow-field AI has made impressive advances in recent years. The event horizon that will bring these profound changes may be decidedly more immanent then previously forecast, making the need for discussion and planning necessary public policy changes more immediate. Mr. Ford gives compelling examples of AI computers or AI-assisted robots that are already demonstrating the ability to takes on task, occupations, and professional domains once thought safe by virtue of their complexity or lengthy training requirements.
The author further expands on some of the expected disruptions inherent in the projected idling of the labor force. Foremost among these are the consequences of wide-spread unemployment on our consumer-driven economy. Ford describes some of possible adaptive adjustments that have been discussed. Not all of his suggestions are practicable or even desirable. Clearly the warning bell is now sounded.
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