Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future (45 page)

46
. Ibid., p. 4.

47
. Ibid., p. 2.

48
. Jaimovich and Siu, “The Trend Is the Cycle: Job Polarization and Jobless Recoveries,” p. 2.

49
. Chrystia Freeland, “The Rise of ‘Lovely’ and ‘Lousy’ Jobs,” Reuters, April 12, 2012,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/12/column-freeland-middleclass-idUSL2E8FCCZZ20120412
.

50
. Galina Hale and Bart Hobijn, “The U.S. Content of ‘Made in China,’” Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (FRBSF), Economic Letter, August 8, 2011,
http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2011/august/us-made-in-china/
.

51
. Data Source: FRED, Federal Reserve Economic Data, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: All Employees Manufacturing, Thousands of Persons, Seasonally Adjusted [MANEMP] divided by All Employees: Total Nonfarm, Thousands of Persons, Seasonally Adjusted [PAYEMS]; US Department of Labor: Bureau of Labor Statistics;
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/PAYEMS/
; accessed June 10, 2014.

52
. Bruce Bartlett, “‘Financialization’ as a Cause of Economic Malaise,”
New York Times
(Economix blog), June 11, 2013,
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/financialization-as-a-cause-of-economic-malaise/
; Brad Delong, “The Financialization of the American Economy” (blog), October 18, 2011,
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/10/the-financialization-of-the-american-economy.html
.

53
. Simon Johnson and James Kwak,
13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown
(New York: Pantheon, 2010), pp. 85–86.

54
. Matt Taibbi, “The Great American Bubble Machine,”
Rolling Stone,
July 9, 2009,
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405
.

55
. There are a number of economic papers demonstrating the relationship between financialization and inequality. For a comprehensive treatment, see James K. Galbraith,
Inequality and Instability: A Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great Crisis
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). On the relationship between financialization and the decline in labor’s share, see
Global Wage Report 2012/13,
International Labour Organization, 2013,
http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups//files/06/06/03/f060603/public/—dgreports/—dcomm/—publ/documents/publication/wcms_194843.pdf
.

56
. Susie Poppick, “4 Ways the Market Could
Really
Surprise You,”
CNN Money,
January 28, 2013,
http://money.cnn.com/gallery/investing/2013/01/28/stock-market-crash.moneymag/index.html
.

57
. Matthew Yglesias, “America’s Private Sector Labor Unions Have Always Been in Decline,”
Slate
(Moneybox blog), March 20, 2013,
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/03/20/private_sector_labor_unions_have_always_been_in_decline.html
.

58
. On Canadian median wages and unionization, see Miles Corak, “The Simple Economics of the Declining Middle Class—and the Not So Simple Politics,”
Economics for Public Policy Blog,
August 7, 2013,
http://milescorak.com/2013/08/07/the-simple-economics-of-the-declining-middle-class-and-the-not-so-simple-politics/
, and “Unions on Decline in Private Sector,”
CBC News Canada,
September 2, 2012,
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/unions-on-decline-in-private-sector-1.1150562
.

59
. Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, “The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?,” Oxford Martin School, Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology, September 17, 2013, p. 38,
http://www.futuretech.ox.ac.uk/sites/futuretech.ox.ac.uk/files/The_Future_of_Employment_OMS_Working_Paper_1.pdf
.

60
. Paul Krugman, “Robots and Robber Barons,”
New York Times,
December 9, 2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/opinion/krugman-robots-and-robber-barons.html?gwh=054BD73AB17F28CD31B3999AABFD7E86
; Jeffrey D. Sachs and Laurence J. Kotlikoff, “Smart Machines and Long-Term Misery,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 18629, issued in December 2012,
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18629.pdf
.

C
HAPTER
3

1
. Robert J. Gordon, “Is U.S. Economic Growth Over? Faltering Innovation Confronts the Six Headwinds,” National Bureau of Economic Research, NBER Working Paper 18315, issued in August 2012,
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18315
; see also
http://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/economics/gordon/is%20us%20economic%20growth%20over.pdf
.

2
. For a more detailed explanation of semiconductor fabrication S-curves, see Murrae J. Bowden, “Moore’s Law and the Technology S-Curve,”
Current Issues in Technology Management,
Stevens Institute of Technology, Winter 2004,
https://www.stevens.edu/howe/sites/default/files/bowden_0.pdf
.

3
. See, for example, Michael Kanellos, “With 3D Chips, Samsung Leaves Moore’s Law Behind,”
Forbes.com
,
August 14, 2013,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkanellos/2013/08/14/with-3d-chips-samsung-leaves-moores-law-behind
; John Markoff, “Researchers Build a Working Carbon Nanotube Computer,”
New York Times,
September 25, 2013,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/26/science/researchers-build-a-working-carbon-nanotube-computer.html?ref=johnmarkoff&_r=0
.

4
. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, “Report to the President and Congress: Designing a Digital Future: Federally Funded Research and Development in Networking and Information Technology,” December 2010, p. 71,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/pcast-nitrd-report-2010.pdf
.

5
. James Fallows, “Why Is Software So Slow?,”
The Atlantic,
August 14, 2013,
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/09/why-is-software-so-slow/309422/
.

6
. Science writer Joy Casad calculates that the speed at which neurons transmit signals is about half a millisecond. That is vastly slower than what occurs in computer chips. See Joy Casad, “How Fast Is a Thought?,”
Examiner.com
,
August 20, 2009,
http://www.examiner.com/article/how-fast-is-a-thought
.

7
. IBM Press Release: “IBM Research Creates New Foundation to Program SyNAPSE Chips,” August 8, 2013,
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ibm-research-creates-foundation-program-040100103.html
.

8
. See, for example, “Rise of the Machines,”
The Economist
(Free Exchange blog), October 20, 2010,
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2010/10/technology
.

9
. Google Investor Relations website,
http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html
.

10
. Historical data on General Motors can be found at
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500_archive/snapshots/1979/563.html
. GM earned $3.5 billion in 1979, which is equivalent to about $11 billion in 2012 dollars.

11
. Scott Timberg, “Jaron Lanier: The Internet Destroyed the Middle Class,”
Salon.com
,
May 12, 2013,
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/12/jaron_lanier_the_internet_destroyed_the_middle_class/
.

12
. This video can be found at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb2cI_gJUok
, or search YouTube for “Man vs. Machine: Will Human Workers Become Obsolete?” Kurzweil’s remarks can be found at about 05:40.

13
. Robert Jensen, “The Digital Provide: Information (Technology), Market Performance and Welfare in the South Indian Fisheries Sector,”
Quarterly Journal of Economics,
122, no. 3 (2007): 879–924.

14
. A few places in which the story of the sardine fishermen of Kerala has been told are
The Rational Optimist
by Matt Ridley,
A History of the World in 100 Objects
by Neil MacGregor,
The Mobile Wave
by Michael Saylor,
Race Against the Machine
by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee,
Content Nation
by John Blossom,
Planet India
by Mira Kamdar, and “To Do with the Price of Fish,”
The Economist,
May 10, 2007. And now this book joins the list.

C
HAPTER
4

1
. David Carr, “The Robots Are Coming! Oh, They’re Here,”
New York Times
(Media Decoder blog), October 19, 2009,
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/the-robots-are-coming-oh-theyre-here
.

2
. Steven Levy, “Can an Algorithm Write a Better News Story Than a Human Reporter?,”
Wired,
April 24, 2012,
http://www.wired.com/2012/04/can-an-algorithm-write-a-better-news-story-than-a-human-reporter
.

3
. Narrative Science corporate website,
http://narrativescience.com
.

4
. George Leef, “The Skills College Graduates Need,” Pope Center for Education Policy, December 14, 2006,
http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=1770
.

5
. Kenneth Neil Cukier and Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger, “The Rise of Big Data,”
Foreign Affairs,
May/June 2013,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139104/kenneth-neil-cukier-and-viktor-mayer-schoenberger/the-rise-of-big-data
.

6
. Thomas H. Davenport, Paul Barth, and Randy Bean, “How ‘Big Data’ Is Different,”
MIT Sloan Management Review,
July 20, 2012,
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-big-data-is-different
.

7
. Charles Duhigg, “How Companies Learn Your Secrets,”
New York Times,
February 16, 2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html
.

8
. As quoted in Steven Levy,
In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011), p. 64.

9
. Tom Simonite, “Facebook Creates Software That Matches Faces Almost as Well as You Do,”
MIT Technology Review,
March 17, 2014,
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/525586/facebook-creates-software-that-matches-faces-almost-as-well-as-you-do/
.

10
. As quoted in John Markoff, “Scientists See Promise in Deep-Learning Programs,”
New York Times,
November 23, 2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/science/scientists-see-advances-in-deep-learning-a-part-of-artificial-intelligence.html
.

11
. Don Peck, “They’re Watching You at Work,”
The Atlantic,
December 2013,
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/12/theyre-watching-you-at-work/354681/
.

12
. United States Patent No. 8,589,407, “Automated Generation of Suggestions for Personalized Reactions in a Social Network,” November 19, 2013,
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&S1=08589407&OS=PN/08589407&RS=PN/08589407
.