Rise of the Robots

"Of all the moderns who have written on automation and rising joblessness, Martin Ford is the original. His Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future is due out this May... Self-recommending." --Marginal Revolution "Robots, and their like, are on the rise. Their impact will be an important question in the next decade and beyond. Martin Ford has been thinking in this area before most others, so this book deserves very careful consideration." --Lawrence Summers, President Emeritus and Charles W. Eliot University Professor, Harvard University "It's not easy to accept, but it's true. Education and hard work will no longer guarantee success for huge numbers of people as technology advances. The time for denial is over. Now it's time to consider solutions and there are very few proposals on the table. Rise of the Robots presents one idea, the basic income model, with clarity and force. No one who cares about the future of human dignity can afford to skip this book." --Jaron Lanier, author of You Are Not a Gadget and Who Owns the Future? "Compelling and well-written... In his conception, the answer is a combination of short-term policies and longer-term initiatives, one of which is a radical idea that may gain some purchase among gloomier techno-profits: a guaranteed income for all citizens. If that stirs up controversy, that's the point. The book is both lucid and bold, and certainly a starting point for robust debate about the future of all workers in an age of advancing robotics and looming artificial intelligence systems." --ZDNet "An alarming new book." --Esquire "A thorough look at how far machines have come" --Washington Post, Innovations blog "Ford offers ideas on changes in social policies, including guaranteed income, to keep our economy humming and prepare ourselves for a more automated future." --Booklist "A careful and courageous examination of automation and its possible impact on society." --Kirkus Reviews "In Rise of the Robots, Ford coolly and clearly considers what work is under threat from automation." --New Scientist "Makes clear the need to come to grips with ever more rapidly advancing technology and its effects on how people make a living and how the economy functions." --Pittsburgh Tribune-Review "Whether you agree or not with the policy prescriptions put forward by [Martin Ford's Rise of the Robots and Anne-Marie Slaughter's Unfinished Business] these two well-written books, and quite a few will likely disagree, they are important reads for those wishing to better understand and influence the future." --Bloomberg Business, Mohamed El-Erian "Few captured the mood as well as Martin Ford in The Rise of the Robots, the winner of the FT and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award, which painted a bleak picture of the upheavals that would come as ever-greater numbers of even highly skilled workers were displaced by machines." --Financial Times "[A] breathtaking new book on modern economics." --Forbes.com "Lucid, comprehensive and unafraid to grapple fairly with those who dispute Ford's basic thesis, Rise of the Robots is an indispensable contribution to a long-running argument." --Los Angeles Times "If The Second Machine Age was last year's tech-economy title of choice, this book may be 2015's equivalent." --Financial Times, Summer books 2015, Business, Andrew Hill "[Ford's] a careful and thoughtful writer who relies on ample evidence, clear reasoning, and lucid economic analysis. In other words, it's entirely possible that he's right." --Daily Beast "Rise of the Robots is an excellent book. Fair-minded, balanced, well-researched, and fully thought through." --Inside Higher Ed, Learn blog "Surveying all the fields now being affected by automation, Ford makes a

Martin Ford, the founder of a Silicon Valley-based software development firm, has over twenty-five years of experience in computer design and software development. The author of The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology, and the Economy of the Future, he lives in Sunnyvale, California.