The Rise of the Robots

'Required reading'. * GQ * 'Ford paints his prediction that "the robots are coming" with certainty and his case is backed up by significant research'. * Director Magazine * 'The Rise of the Robots should come with a warning sticker saying: "This books will provoke a lot of soul-searching"'. * Cambridge Business * 'What Ford does wellis take that deep-set historical techno fear, unpack it and play it back to us on the intellectual big screen, magnified and with plenty of hard-hitting stats thrown in to boost the special effects and make sure the volume is turned up to 11'. * Management Today * 'Alarming... surreal... it is time to be afraid, very afraid... For the moment there is no hope that the rise of the robots will not be accompanied by the fall of the humans' * Sunday Times Culture * 'The elephant in the room of artificial intelligence is mass obsolescence of the human workforce it threatens to supplant. Ford stares the elephant in the face'. * Observer * Perhaps the clearest example of genre-hopping to be found in 2015 was the boom in books by journalists and technology writers on what has long been one of the central concerns of science fiction: the implications of artificial intelligence and automation Few captured the mood as well as Martin Ford in The Rise of the Robots... 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, Best Books of 2015 * 'Frightening and important...the more people that read it, the better for all of us'. * Destructive Music * 'Packed with irresistible gee-whizz facts but...also anxious about what might happen next, especially to human employment...well worth reading'. * Guardian * Well researched and disturbingly persuasive. * Financial Times * Everyone concerned with the future of work must read this book. -- Lord Robert Skidelsky, Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick [The Rise of the Robots is] about as scary as the title suggests. Its not science fiction, but rather a vision (almost) of economic Armageddon. -- Frank Bruni, New York Times A fascinating journey into the near future world of unemployment. Ford issues a stark warning that automation in the form of robotics is moving beyond the menial jobs to put the rest of us out of work. Read it now before it is too late. -- Noel Sharkey, Emeritus Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, University of Sheffield Lucid, comprehensive and unafraid to grapple fairly with those who dispute Fords basic thesis, Rise of the Robots is an indispensable contribution to a long-running argument. * Los Angeles Times * Finally someone is addressing this important topic that has both a grasp on the economic issues and a grounded understanding of what AI and robotics technology is really capable of now and in the near future. This is combined with a clarity of explanation that can help anyone understand the significant societal changes that will soon be upon us. -- Dr. Nick Hawes, Reader in Autonomous Intelligent Robotics, University of Birmingham The real existential threat of AI is not biological extinction but philosophical identity, as even (or perhaps especially) humanitys greatest thinkers have to come to terms with the fact that their abilities can be not only understood, but replicated in machines. Martin Ford addresses this new reality with exceptional insight and clarity. He doesnt shy away from recognizing the many positive outcomes of intelligent technology, while exposing the negative consequences of the very real impacts our society is already experiencing. -- Dr Joanna Bryson, Department of Computer Science, University of Bath As Martin Ford documents in Rise of the Robots, the job-eating maw of technology now threate

Martin Ford, the founder of a Silicon Valleybased software development firm, has over twenty-five years of experience in computer design and software development. He was the first modern writer to raise the issue of technology-led unemployment. He lives in Sunnyvale, California and tweets at @MFordFuture.