Rise of the Robots

In Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future (2015), a work of speculative futurism, software entrepreneur and author Martin Ford, argues that the advent of artificial intelligence, within the larger phenomenon of accelerating technological evolution, will dramatically impact the division of labor in near-future societies. Ford expresses ambivalence towards this inevitability, suggesting that though new technologies will ameliorate many human problems, they will prevent even the most educated people from finding gainful employment since most jobs will be rendered obsolete or automated. The book received mostly positive criticism for its compelling and lucid argument about the near-future of artificial intelligence and its broad impact on economic and social structures.

Ford begins by looking at the recent history of technological advancement and characterizing the trajectory of the near future. A feature of technological evolution in the twentieth century was its chilling effect on the well-being and upward mobility of uneducated workers. This is due, in large part, to the automation of large-motor manual tasks using heavy machinery, factories, and the assembly line. The twentieth-first century, in contrast, is already seeing the displacement of educated workers. Highly specialized roles, including many doctors, lawyers, and engineers, are leaning harder on software and other emergent technologies and methodologies, which are often more efficient and accurate than their human complements. Ford argues that any new industry in the future will barely require physical labor. Moreover, he observes that some of the largest and wealthiest companies today, such as Instagram and YouTube, run with extremely tiny human capital, utilizing algorithms as substitutes for human brains.

With this dramatic shift in the global economy, Ford proposes that humans will soon be in a crisis. While many people today still follow the notion that a “skills ladder” exists before them, waiting to be climbed, Ford contends that the more accurate metaphor is a “skills pyramid,” where the top has only so much room, even for the most skilled individuals. Given these assumptions about the future of technology, Ford argues that governments need to start implementing a universal basic income so that human communities can continue to flourish alongside accelerating technological evolution.



Ford argues that the explosive effect of accelerating technological evolution on social and economic life has been anticipated since at least 1960. Around that time, a group of experts spanning many disciplines, including chemistry, economics, and computer science, wrote a memo to President Johnson. The memo coined the term “triple revolution,” by which they meant the changes that would stem from civil rights revolutions, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the machine economy. Ford argues that while the first two revolutions were seriously considered, the latter got almost no attention. The memo anticipates an unemployment epidemic, yawning gaps in socioeconomic equality, and ultimate economic collapse due to mass poverty.

Ford exhorts his audience to realize that this third revolution is imminent, and spends the remainder of the book exposing its many identifying signals. One main signal is that productivity increases no longer correlate strongly to wage increases. He refutes the argument that this divergence is simply due to the replacement of inefficient institutions with efficient ones, emphasizing that wealth is becoming consolidated into corporate reserves and the assets of the ultra-rich. As an example of this phenomenon, he points to YouTube, which was sold to Google for nearly $2 billion with a staff of only sixty-five employees. Ford refutes the platitude that high efficiency induces lower prices, because a simultaneous result of ultra-high efficiency is the virtual elimination of wages, and, therefore, the loss of spending power.

Rise of the Robots ends with Ford acknowledging that the third revolution is approaching inexorably. Rather than try to reverse the irreversible, he urges individuals to look for ways to prioritize human needs over market theories. One way of doing this is by establishing a guaranteed basic income. Whether or not such a policy is truly best, the book is a compelling rebuke of greedy corporate employees and overly optimistic techno-futurists who contend that evolution is always equivalent to progress.