title: Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future
author:  Martin Ford 
description: A careful and courageous examination of automation and its possible impact on society.<br /><b><i>Kirkus Reviews</i></b><br /><br />In <i>Rise of the Robots</i>, Ford coolly and clearly considers what work is under threat from automation.<br /><b><i>New Scientist</i></b><br /><br />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.<br /><b><i>Pittsburgh Tribune-Review</i></b><br /><br />Of all the moderns who have written on automation and rising joblessness, Martin Ford is the original. His <i>Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future</i> is due out this May.... Self-recommending.<br /><b><i>Marginal Revolution</i></b><br /><br />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.<br /><b>Lawrence Summers, President Emeritus and Charles W. Eliot University Professor, Harvard University</b><br /><br />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.<br /><b>ZDNet</b><br /><br />An alarming new book.<br /><b><i>Esquire</i></b><br /><br />A thorough look at how far machines have come<br /><b><i>Washington Post</i>, Innovations blog</b><br /><br />Ford tells great stories, both about innovation in the last 50 years and about the potential impacts of widespread automation of work in the future<i>Rise of the Robots</i> is a competent, approachable, and well-written synthesis of information across many area, and provides a valuable, coherent picture of automation's socio-economic interactions.<br /><b><i>IEEE Technology and Society Magazine</i></b><br /><br />Ford offers ideas on changes in social policies, including guaranteed income, to keep our economy humming and prepare ourselves for a more automated future.<br /><b><i>Booklist</i></b><br /><br /><br />
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  Praise for _Rise of the Robots_
  
  
  Longlisted for the 2015 800-CEO-READ Business Book Award
  
  
  “This is both a humbling book and, in the best sense, a humble book. . . . As
  Martin Ford documents in _Rise of the Robots_ , the job-eating maw of
  technology now threatens even the nimblest and most expensively educated . . .
  the human consequences of robotization are already upon us, and skillfully
  chronicled here. . . . Ford, a software entrepreneur who both understands the
  technology and has made a thorough study of its economic consequences, never
  succumbs to the obvious temptation to overdramatize or exaggerate…as a first
  step toward a solution, Ford’s may be the best that the feeble human mind can
  come up with at the moment.”
  
  
  — _New York Times Book Review_
  
  
  “Mr. Ford lucidly sets out myriad examples of how focused applications of
  versatile machines (coupled with human helpers where necessary) could displace
  or de-skill many jobs. . . . You will likely read with mount