Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation

One may agree or disagree with the authors views, but certainly this book is essential reading for thriving and living a happy life in the coming years

I’ve read a few books on this topic but unfortunately this one is one of the weaker ones. The author clearly has a prefixed view that automation and technology is generally bad because it causes people to lose jobs. He confronts arguments such as previous waves of technology creating more jobs than were lost with arguments such as, yes, but it was hard for some people. My question back to him would be, should we have not had the Industrial Revolution because it was hard on some groups, and instead we could just be farmers like most of history? He doesn't weigh the huge benefits of technology with its costs ina rational way, instead focusing on temporary negatives, anecdotes and in his own words ‘gut feeling’. If you are already a techno pessimist and you want an unsophisticated shopping list of points that agree with you, this book is for you. If you want to learn something about this subject, look elsewhere. Rise of the Robots was a far better book, for instance.

Absolute masterpiece. Very “now” … buy some for your friends too

The content is interesting but we used the book in a bookclub discussion group mainly composed of baby boomers and we discussed 3 chapters at a time. The unexpected result was that we didn't have too much to discuss. We all pretty much agreed that it is society's responsibility to set limits on AI and that businesses would never do it voluntarily. How this would happen is not covered too well. Perhaps it can't be.Some of the material (Chapter 8 for example on skills needed to future proof yourself) seemed to focus on things that were not measurable - some of the references were good though.All in all, it may be more interesting to a younger audience that struggles with the use of social media more than us old fogies who don't have a problem shutting off our phones.

The general idea in the book is really not intuitive to most people, but it certainly makes a lot of sense when one works (like me) in an environment of white collar, office perks, where there are a lot of inefficiencies and loss of time around.The summary would be: people are afraid of robots taking over their jobs, especially is the job is automatable from the point of view that we get from movies and folklore, where a robot, a physical, more or less anthropomorphic metal assembly seems to outperform what I do at work.But this is not what is necessarily going to happen. What is going to be automated, and it is in fact being automated as of today, is the inefficiencies rooted in the office environment, where a lot of automations are now not present and there is a potential gain from not spending time and money in something that does not add value.In my case, at work we design for the semiconductor industry. We use workstations and 3D CAD software, and Microsoft Office. The amount of automations that we perform just to communicate facts from 3D CAD to Microsoft Office are about 35% of our time, yet that time adds nothing to our company or our customers. That is where RPA (Robotic Process Automation, read: please algorithm do in 1 second what takes me 4 weeks) jumps in, and that is where the gain is.To avoid being replaced by such automations, one must become a person who does not need to use them. The more automations your job include, the more of your time at work is at risk. Remember when an array of secretaries were at every big company in the early 80's? Today they are of limited value mostly because lots of their tasks are done by Outlook, kind of 100 times faster, 10 times better and 10000 times cheaper, and the result is that the salary of a secretary has decreased relative to the one in the late 80's.This is what is going to happen to a lot of automations at work and that is where, according to the author of this book, the risk exist. And in his words all seems plausible and likely to happen.It is a light, interesting book to read.

I purchased the hardcover version.I think this is a book that will benefit most people in 2021. We need to stop and have a conscious look at the way we use our phone and apps, and the AI that govern them. We should consider our jobs which may be given to a robot in the not-so-far future. We must think about our human relationships and our distinctly human qualities.If you're on the fence of whether to purchase this book, download the Kindle sample and read the Introduction (the sample starts at Chapter 1 and only shows 2 pages so go backwards till you get to the Introduction).If you take off the book cover, this is a black hardcover book which has gold foil font along the binding. It looks quite sleek but I have a complaint: Lightly sweaty hands make black spots transfer onto the hands.I quite enjoyed the book. It was short but carried a sense of urgency that we should not ignore.

I devoured "Futureproof" almost in one sitting and have now urged it rather forcefully on my friends. It is, hands down, the best humanist take on living with technology since Tom Standage's lovely 1998 meditation, "The Victorian Internet." He is wonderfully even-handed; he debunks both the blithe Silicon Valley myth that technology inevitably makes life better for everyone and the dystopian horror stories from modern-day Luddites. So, does STEM education merely steer our kids into the jobs robots are already taking over? Have all technological revolutions ended happily? Or terribly? What gives humans an edge over robots, and how do we cultivate those survival skills? Roose offers wise, well-researched answers to these and a host of other issues posed by the impact that artificial intelligence and automation are having on our world, our lives, our souls.