Information Age automation is coming for your job

This new video by Kurzgesagt examines automation in the past (“big stupid machines doing repetitive work in factories”) and argues that automation in the information age is fundamentally different. In a nutshell,¹ whereas past automation resulted in higher productivity and created new and better jobs for a growing population, automation in the future will happen at a much quicker pace, outpacing the creation of new types of jobs for humans.

Their two main sources for the video are Martin Ford’s Rise of the Robots and The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee.

1. The German phrase “kurz gesagt” means roughly “in a nutshell”, so this is a pun. Laugh now!↩

• Andrew McAfee
• books
• economics
• Erik Brynjolfsson
• Kurzgesagt
• Martin Ford
• Rise of the Robots
• robots
• The Second Machine Age
• video
• working