The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI

by Ray Kurzweil

In the first decade of the nineteenth century, about 1 out of 35 American workers were employed in manufacturing.[50] The Industrial Revolution soon transformed major cities, though, as steam-powered factories sprang up and demanded millions of low-skilled laborers. By 1870 almost 1 in 5 workers were in manufacturing, mainly in the rapidly industrializing North.[51] The second wave of the Industrial Revolution brought a new mass of workers—largely immigrants—into manufacturing around the start of the twentieth century. The development of the assembly line greatly increased efficiency, and as prices for products fell, they became accessible to more and more people.[52] As demand grew, factories had to hire new armies of workers, and peacetime manufacturing employment peaked around 1920 at an estimated 26.9 percent of the civilian labor force.[53] Methods of measuring the size of the labor force have changed somewhat over time, so we can’t perfectly compare this figure with those of later decades, but a general fact is clear. Aside from the disruptions of the Great Depression (when manufacturing employment temporarily fell) and World War II (when it temporarily rose), the US workforce maintained about 1 in 4 people in manufacturing until the 1970s.[54] For roughly five decades, there was no overall upward or downward trend.