Rise of the Robots [Book Reviews]

author = "E. Stayton",

journal = "IEEE Technology and Society Magazine",

title = "Rise of the Robots [Book Reviews]",

year = "2016",

volume = "35",

number = "2",

pages = "18--20",

abstract = "The book is laudable as a trade book about emerging technologies. It presents a broad, sweeping overview of the issues at hand for the modern labourer in the increasingly automated economy. From manufacturing to the service sector, from elder care to intelligent tutoring, myriad applications of artificial intelligence are addressed - enough that, if one accepts the author's claims about the impacts of increasing automation, there is no conceivable alternate economic sector in which those job losses can be offset. This multiple-industry focus distinguishes his book from those focused specifically on manufacturing or commercial robotics, and aligns it more closely with contemporary works like Brynjolfsson and McAffee's Second Machine Age, though the author is ultimately less optimistic about the future. Also key to this work's approach, the author fuses the technical, including approachable descriptions of technologies like artificial neural networks and genetic programming, with economic and political information and critique. The book uses descriptions of advancing AI technology to set up its punchline: the economy must be restructured to avoid total collapse. To this end, the author provides a number of insightful and productive re-framings of salient economic issues. Off-shoring becomes virtual immigration, since remote workers profit from the economy and the infrastructure of a nation without directly contributing to its economy. Similarly, the author asks if decades of public investment in information technology (via DARPA, NSF, and other organizations) should give citizens a claim on the ownership of society's accumulated technological capital that is otherwise at risk of being captured by a small, elite minority. The economy, according to the author, can be likewise reinterpreted as a resource in which all citizens have a stake, and therefore can be used to rationalize a guaranteed minimum income. Overall, the- book is well-constructed, aimed at a popular audience that knows little about the underlying automation technologies or the social and economic realities of competing with automation. For a technologist, the coverage of the robots themselves is not particularly novel or insightful beyond what a consistent reader of Wired, Technology Review, and other technology-focused publications would already be familiar with. And for someone who attends to debates in contemporary economics or public policy, much of the economic and policy information is unlikely to be ground breaking. But while little of Ford's book is on the cutting edge of any one sub-field, Rise of the Robots is a competent, approachable, and a well-written synthesis of information across many areas, and provides a valuable, coherent picture of automation's socio-economic interact ions.",

keywords = "genetic algorithms, genetic programming, Automation, Human factors, Manufacturing processes, Production engineering, Robots, Technology",

DOI = "

doi:10.1109/MTS.2016.2554705",

ISSN = "0278-0097",

month = jun,

notes = "Also known as \cite{7484828}",