Kevin Roose

A New York Times technology columnist's timely, counterintuitive, and highly practical guide to success in the age of A.I. and automation. The machines are here. After decades of sci-fi doomsaying and marketing hype, advanced A.I. and automation technologies have leapt out of research labs and Silicon Valley engineering departments and into the center of our lives. Robots once primarily threatened blue-collar manufacturing jobs, but today's machines are being trained to do the work of lawyers, doctors, investment bankers, and other white-collar jobs previously considered safe from automation's reach. The world's biggest corporations are racing to automate jobs, and some experts predict that A.I could put millions of people out of work. Meanwhile, runaway algorithms have already changed the news we see, the politicians we elect, and the ways we interact with each other. But all is not lost. With a little effort, we can become futureproof. In Futureproof: 9 Rules for Machine-Age Humans, New York Times technology columnist Kevin Roose lays out an optimistic vision of how people can thrive in the machine age by rethinking their relationship with technology, and making themselves irreplaceably human. In nine pragmatic, accessible lessons, Roose draws on interviews with leading technologists, trips to the A.I. frontier, and centuries' worth of history to prepare readers to live, work, and thrive in the coming age of intelligent machines. He shares the secrets of people and organizations that have successfully survived technological change, including a nineteenth-century rope-maker and a Japanese auto worker, and explains how people, organizations, and communities can apply their lessons to safeguard their own futures. The lessons include: - Do work that is surprising, social, and scarce (the types of work machines can't do) - Break your phone addiction with the help of a rubber band - Work in an office - Treat A.I. like the office gorilla - Resist "hustle porn" and efficiency culture and do less, slower Roose's examination of the future rejects the conventional wisdom that in order to compete with machines, we have to become more like them--hyper-efficient, data-driven, code-writing workhorses. Instead, he says, we should let machines be machines, and focus on doing the kinds of creative, inspiring, and meaningful work only humans can do.

9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation

Futureproof

Danny White

Fears of job-killing machines aren’t new. In fact, they date back to roughly 350 B.C.E., when Aristotle mused that automated weavers and self-playing harps could reduce the demand for slave labor

...none of this is predetermined. Executives, not algorithms, decide whether to replace human workers. Regulators, not robots, decide what limits to place on emerging technologies like facial recognition and targeted digital advertising.

...the key to living a happy, rewarding life in the age of AI and automation is not competing with machines head-on—learning to code, optimizing your life, eliminating all forms of personal inefficiency and waste—but strengthening your uniquely human skills, so you’re better equipped to do the things machines can’t do.

The Luddites earned their place in the history books by breaking their weaving machines, but they didn’t reverse the effects of industrialization

Home refrigeration made ice salesmen obsolete, but it created many more jobs for grocers, restaurateurs, and farmers

if you could write a user’s manual for your job, give it to someone else, and that person could learn to do your job as well as you in a month or less, you’re probably going to be replaced by a machine.

...jobs that tap into our social desires—bartenders, hair stylists, flight attendants, mental health workers—will be hard to automate. And people who are skilled at creating social and emotional experiences will be better positioned for the future than people whose primary skill is making or doing things efficiently

A good general rule is that jobs that make people feel things are much safer than jobs that simply involve making or doing things

No matter how good AI gets, humans still want role models, and we want to be inspired by human greatness

YouTube has said that recommendations are responsible for more than 70 percent of all time spent on the site... Netflix has said that 80 percent of the movies viewed on its service come from recommendations

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