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41 " a great many college-educated, white-collar workers are going to discover that their jobs, too, are squarely in the sights as software automation and predictive algorithms advance rapidly in capability. "
― Martin Ford , Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future
42 " The evaporation of thousands of skilled information technology jobs is likely a precursor for a much more wide-ranging impact on knowledge-based employment. "
43 " Indeed, a 2013 study by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne at the University of Oxford concluded that occupations amounting to nearly half of US total employment may be vulnerable to automation within roughly the next two decades.59 "
44 " Today’s computer technology exists in some measure because millions of middle-class taxpayers supported federal funding for basic research in the decades following World War II. We can be reasonably certain that those taxpayers offered their support in the expectation that the fruits of that research would create a more prosperous future for their children and grandchildren. Yet, the trends we looked at in the last chapter suggest we are headed toward a very different outcome. BEYOND THE BASIC MORAL QUESTION of whether a tiny elite should be able to, in effect, capture ownership of society’s accumulated technological capital, there are also practical issues regarding the overall health of an economy in which income inequality becomes too extreme. Continued progress depends on a vibrant market for future innovations—and that, in turn, requires a reasonable distribution of purchasing power. "
45 " In particular, the rise of companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon has propelled a great deal of progress. Never before have such deep-pocketed corporations viewed artificial intelligence as absolutely central to their business models—and never before has AI research been positioned so close to the nexus of competition between such powerful entities. A similar competitive dynamic is unfolding among nations. AI is becoming indispensable to militaries, intelligence agencies, and the surveillance apparatus in authoritarian states.* Indeed, an all-out AI arms race might well be looming in the near future. "
46 " Growth in median incomes during this period tracked nearly perfectly with per capita GDP. Three decades later, median household income had increased to about $61,000, an increase of just 22 percent. That growth, however, was driven largely by the entry of women into the workforce. If incomes had moved in lockstep with economic growth—as was the case prior to 1973—the median household would today be earning well in excess of $90,000, over 50 percent more than the $61,000 they do earn. "
47 " WorkFusion, a start-up company based in the New York City area, offers an especially vivid example of the dramatic impact that white-collar automation is likely to have on organizations. The "
48 " chickens are grown to standardized sizes so as to make them compatible with automated slaughtering and processing. "
49 " Vision Robotics, a company based in San Diego, California, is developing an octopus-like orange harvesting machine. The robot will use three-dimensional machine vision to make a computer model of an entire orange tree and then store the location of each fruit. That information will then be passed on to the machine’s eight robotic arms, which will rapidly harvest the oranges. "
50 " In Japan, a new machine is able to select ripe strawberries based on subtle color variations and then pick a strawberry every eight seconds—working continuously and doing most of the work at night. "
51 " advances in AI are poised to drive dramatic productivity increases and perhaps eventually full automation. Radiologists, for example, are trained to interpret the images that result from various medical scans. Image processing and recognition technology is advancing rapidly and may soon be able to usurp the radiologist’s traditional role. Software can already recognize people in photos posted on Facebook and even help identify potential terrorists in airports. "
52 " This gives us a lot more than just a visual model: it also gives us a physical model of objects. "
― Martin Ford , Architects of Intelligence: The truth about AI from the people building it
53 " In other words, one of the most fundamental ideas woven into the American ethos—the belief that anyone can get ahead through hard work and perseverance—really has little basis in statistical reality. "
54 " As an IBM document describing the Watson technology points out: “We have noses that run, and feet that smell. How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, but a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? "
55 " This S-shaped path in which accelerating—or exponential—advance ultimately matures into a plateau effectively illustrates the life story of virtually all specific technologies. "
56 " The desire to take over the world is not correlated with intelligence, it’s correlated with testosterone. "
57 " I think it would be very premature to declare the MOOC phenomenon down for the count. We may, rather, simply be seeing the early-stage stumbles that are typical of new technologies. "
58 " The relentless acceleration of computer hardware over decades suggests that we’ve somehow managed to remain on the steep part of the S-curve for far longer than has been possible in other spheres of technology. The reality, however, is that Moore’s Law has involved successfully climbing a staircase of cascading S-curves, each representing a specific semiconductor fabrication technology. "
59 " For example, the lithographic process used to lay out integrated circuits was initially based on optical imaging techniques. When the size of individual device elements shrank to the point where the wavelength of visible light was too long to allow for further progress, the semiconductor industry moved on to X-ray lithography. "
60 " Today’s computer technology exists in some measure because millions of middle-class taxpayers supported federal funding for basic research in the decades following World War II. We can be reasonably certain that those taxpayers offered their support in the expectation that the fruits of that research would create a more prosperous future for their children and grandchildren. "