A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond - Softcover

Susskind, Daniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1250808251 ISBN 13: 9781250808257

Publisher: Picador USA, 2021

Synopsis

SHORTLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES & MCKINSEY 2020 BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR
One of Fortune Best Books of the Year
One of Inc. Best Business Books of the Year
One of The Times (UK) Best Business Books of the Year
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

From an Oxford economist, a visionary account of how technology will transform the world of work, and what we should do about it

From mechanical looms to the combustion engine to the first computers, new technologies have always provoked panic about workers being replaced by machines. For centuries, such fears have been misplaced, and many economists maintain that they remain so today. But as Daniel Susskind demonstrates, this time really is different. Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence mean that all kinds of jobs are increasingly at risk.

Drawing on almost a decade of research in the field, Susskind argues that machines no longer need to think like us in order to outperform us, as was once widely believed. As a result, more and more tasks that used to be far beyond the capability of computers - from diagnosing illnesses to drafting legal contracts, from writing news reports to composing music - are coming within their reach. The threat of technological unemployment is now real.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, Susskind emphasizes. Technological progress could bring about unprecedented prosperity, solving one of humanity's oldest problems: how to make sure that everyone has enough to live on. The challenges will be to distribute this prosperity fairly, to constrain the burgeoning power of Big Tech, and to provide meaning in a world where work is no longer the center of our lives. Perceptive, pragmatic, and ultimately hopeful, A World Without Work shows the way.

About this title

About the Author

Daniel Susskind is the coauthor of The Future of the Professions, named as one of the best books of the year by the Financial Times, New Scientist, and the Times Literary Supplement. He is a fellow in economics at Balliol College, Oxford. Previously, he was a policy adviser for the prime minister's strategy unit and a senior adviser in the cabinet office of the British government.

From the Back Cover

To predict our future, we must look to the extremes. So argues the economist Richard Davies, who takes readers to the margins of the modern economy and beyond in his globe-trotting book. From a prison in rural Louisiana where inmates purchase drugs with prepaid cash cards to the poorest major city on earth, where residents buy clean water in plastic bags, from the world’s first digital state to a prefecture in Japan whose population is the oldest in the world, how these extreme economies function―most often well outside any official oversight―offers a glimpse of the forces that underlie human resilience, drive societies to failure, and will come to shape our collective future.

Edition details

• Publisher: Picador USA
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1250808251
• ISBN 13: 9781250808257
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336