Humans Need Not Apply

A Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

by Jerry Kaplan

Number of pages: 256

BBB Library: Technology and Globalization

ISBN: 978-0300213553

About the Author

Samuel Jerrold "Jerry" Kaplan is an American computer scientist, author, futurist, and serial entrepreneur. He is best known as a pioneer in the field of pen computing and tablet computers.

Editorial Review

Global warming is a bear, but we aren’t bears. Most animals don’t have the native intelligence to think their way out of habitat changes, but we do. The accelerating evolution of our labor ecosystem, propelled by continual technological advances, compels us to take a fresh look at the way we prepare our young and even ourselves for productive and fruitful lives.

Book Reviews

“In Humans Need Not Apply, Jerry Kaplan, a computer industry veteran who is now a fellow in Stanford University’s Center for Legal Informatics, leaves behind the deadly archetypes of speculative fiction to take a broad look at artificial intelligence as a real-world area of study.” – Times Higher Education

“This book is a written introduction to the threat of automation. However, his proposed solutions are less certain. Kaplan suggests a “job mortgage”, secured on your future income. It seems to put a lot of faith in employers who would take much of the risk. Yet there is no certainty they will be in a position to do so.” – Financial Times

“The book starts with an enjoyable history of AI. I enjoyed the account of an early robot running amok - in 1972 one of the first computer-controlled arms was not bolted firmly enough to a table and broke free, rampaging all around the lab, cornering one terrified worker, until some brave rescuer dived to yank the plug from the wall socket.” – Management Today

“Anybody who wants to go painlessly from a standing start to a pretty thorough grounding in a debate that’s only going to intensify in the years ahead – even if there are more of those years than either author will readily admit.” – The Guardian

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Wisdom to Share

The accelerating evolution of our labor ecosystem, propelled by continual technological advances, compels us to take a fresh look at the way we prepare our young and even ourselves for productive and fruitful lives.

Payments would be limited to some percentage of earnings, in a similar spirit to the way mortgage lenders enforce a payment-to-income ratio for their loans. And there needs to be certain built-in relief in case of problems.

For the potential employee, the key is that the loan is paid back only out of earned income—it is secured by future paychecks.

Enrollments at the training institutions will be naturally sized to the available pool of jobs in the market because they are largely reliant on these loans to fund their programs.

A short artificial delay might also slow or stop the incredible arms race currently under way to reduce transaction latency.

A simple step to reduce the financial impact of HFT programs would be to charge a tiny amount for requests for information, that is, bid and ask (price) requests.

Modern policy makers are wringing their hands over the root causes of persistent unemployment and economic inequality, but certainly one underappreciated driver is accelerating technological progress.

Unless you understand what’s happening, you can’t appreciate what’s likely to happen in the future.

To date, automation has mostly meant special-purpose machines relegated to performing repetitive, single tasks on factory floors, where the environment is designed around them. In contrast, these new systems will be out and about.