Rise of the Robots Quotes

“The unfortunate reality is that a great many people will do everything right—at least in terms of pursuing higher education and acquiring skills—and yet will still fail to find a solid foothold in the new economy.”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“While lower-skill occupations will no doubt continue to be affected, a great many college-educated, white-collar workers are going to discover that their jobs, too, are squarely in the sights as software automation and predictive algorithms advance rapidly in capability.”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“In the nearly half-century since then, belief in the promise of education as the universal solution to unemployment and poverty has evolved hardly at all. The machines, however, have changed a great deal. Diminishing”
― Martin Ford, The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of Mass Unemployment

“The problem, he said, wasn’t going to solve itself: “[T]oo many people are coming into the labor market and too many machines are throwing people out.”1 The”
― Martin Ford, The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of Mass Unemployment

“Today’s computer technology exists in some measure because millions of middle-class taxpayers supported federal funding for basic research in the decades following World War II. We can be reasonably certain that those taxpayers offered their support in the expectation that the fruits of that research would create a more prosperous future for their children and grandchildren.”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“The Ford Motor Company CEO taunts Reuther by asking, “Walter, how are you going to get these robots to pay union dues?” Reuther comes right back at Ford, asking, “Henry, how are you going to get them to buy your cars?” While”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“I do not see anything especially dystopian in offering some relatively unproductive people a minimum income as an incentive to leave the workforce. As long as the result is more opportunity and higher incomes for those who do want to work hard and advance their situation.”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“The Singularity itself will occur some time around 2045.”
― Martin Ford, The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of Mass Unemployment

“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. All”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“Lanier”
― Martin Ford, The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of Mass Unemployment

“In 2011, big companies generated an average of $420,000 in revenue for each employee, an increase of more than 11 percent over the 2007 figure of $378,000.”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“Genetic programming essentially allows computer algorithms to design themselves through a process of Darwinian natural selection. Computer code is initially generated randomly and then repeatedly shuffled using techniques that emulate sexual reproduction. Every so often, a random mutation is thrown in to help drive the process in entirely new directions.”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“Perhaps the most remarkable elder-care innovation developed in Japan so far is the Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL)—a powered exoskeleton suit straight out of science fiction. Developed by Professor Yoshiyuki Sankai of the University of Tsukuba, the HAL suit is the result of twenty years of research and development. Sensors in the suit are able to detect and interpret signals from the brain. When the person wearing the battery-powered suit thinks about standing up or walking, powerful motors instantly spring into action, providing mechanical assistance. A version is also available for the upper body and could assist caretakers in lifting the elderly. Wheelchair-bound seniors have been able to stand up and walk with the help of HAL. Sankai’s company, Cyberdyne, has also designed a more robust version of the exoskeleton for use by workers cleaning up the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in the wake of the 2011 disaster. The company says the suit will almost completely offset the burden of over 130 pounds of tungsten radiation shielding worn by workers.* HAL is the first elder-care robotic device to be certified by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry. The suits lease for just under $2,000 per year and are already in use at over three hundred Japanese hospitals and nursing homes.21”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“advances in AI are poised to drive dramatic productivity increases and perhaps eventually full automation. Radiologists, for example, are trained to interpret the images that result from various medical scans. Image processing and recognition technology is advancing rapidly and may soon be able to usurp the radiologist’s traditional role. Software can already recognize people in photos posted on Facebook and even help identify potential terrorists in airports.”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“In other words, one of the most fundamental ideas woven into the American ethos—the belief that anyone can get ahead through hard work and perseverance—really has little basis in statistical reality.”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“The revolution now under way is happening not just because of the acceleration itself but because that acceleration has been going on for so long that the amount of progress we can now expect in any given year is potentially mind-boggling.”
― Martin Ford, The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of Mass Unemployment

“Manufacturing jobs in the United States currently account for well under 10 percent of total employment.”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“Between 2009 and 2012, US textile and apparel exports rose by 37 percent to a total of nearly $23 billion.7”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“About 1.2 million jobs—more than three-quarters of domestic employment in the textile sector—vanished between 1990 and 2012.”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“machines themselves are turning into workers, and the line between the capability of labor and capital is blurring as never before.”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“The essential point is that a worker is also a consumer (and may support other consumers). These people drive final demand. When a worker is replaced by a machine, that machine does not go out and consume. The machine may use energy and spare parts and require maintenance, but again, those are business inputs, not final demand. If there is no one to buy what the machine is producing, it will ultimately be shut down. An industrial robot in an auto manufacturing plant will not continue running if no one is buying the cars it is assembling.”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“Within weeks of the product’s introduction, both university-based engineering teams and do-it-yourself innovators had hacked into the Kinect and posted YouTube videos of robots that were now able to see in three dimensions.4”
― Martin Ford, The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of Mass Unemployment

“One of the obvious implications of a potential intelligence explosion is that there would be an overwhelming first-mover advantage. In other words, whoever gets there first will be effectively uncatchable.”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“These “Singularians” have gone so far as to establish their own educational institution. Singularity University, located in Silicon Valley, offers unaccredited graduate-level programs focused on the study of exponential technology and counts Google, Genentech, Cisco, and Autodesk among its corporate sponsors.”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“The real question, I think, is not whether the field as a whole is in any real danger of another AI winter but, rather, whether progress remains limited to narrow AI or ultimately expands to Artificial General Intelligence as well.”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“Why aren’t average Americans more upset about the fact that they are paying the pharmaceutical freight for the rest of the world—including a number of countries that have significantly higher per capita incomes than the United States?”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“For example, the lithographic process used to lay out integrated circuits was initially based on optical imaging techniques. When the size of individual device elements shrank to the point where the wavelength of visible light was too long to allow for further progress, the semiconductor industry moved on to X-ray lithography.”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“The relentless acceleration of computer hardware over decades suggests that we’ve somehow managed to remain on the steep part of the S-curve for far longer than has been possible in other spheres of technology. The reality, however, is that Moore’s Law has involved successfully climbing a staircase of cascading S-curves, each representing a specific semiconductor fabrication technology.”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“This S-shaped path in which accelerating—or exponential—advance ultimately matures into a plateau effectively illustrates the life story of virtually all specific technologies.”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“the American workforce—earned about $767 per week in 1973. The following year, real average wages began a precipitous decline from which they would never fully recover. A full four decades later, a similar worker earns just $664, a decline of about 13 percent.”
― Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future