It’s one thing to have an automotive factory filled with robots that perform specific simple tasks very precisely. However, the next step is adding machines with intelligence, and it’s hard to tell how far it will go ultimately, but AI promises even more disruption into the world of work and the economy.

The format of the book is a series of interviews with experts in the field which is probably the most promising approach to a topic that is still experimental and open ended.

Here’s a review, with a warning in the last paragraph that is rather chilling:

Martin Ford: One-on-One with the Architects of Intelligence, By John K. Waters, PureAI.com, November 26, 2018

In Martin Ford’s last book, the best-selling “Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future” (Basic Books, 2015), the noted futurist explained how software that can leverage Big Data and predictive algorithms is poised to “transform the nature and number of knowledge-based jobs in organizations and industries across the board.” In other words, it’s not just blue collar workers whose jobs are threatened by the advent of AI and machine learning. If your white collar gig can be automated, add it to the endangered species list.

In his new book, “Architects of Intelligence: The Truth About AI from the People Building It” (Packt Publishing), which just hit the shelves this month, Ford assembles a fascinating series of in-depth, one-on-one interviews with 23 of the world’s leading researchers and entrepreneurs working in various aspects of the fields of AI and robotics.

“Over the last decade, ‘AI’ has been primarily about deep learning,” Ford told Pure AI, “so I made sure to include the most prominent people I could find working on that technology. But I also picked a number of people who have been critical of it, as well as people researching other areas, such as emotional AI, and some people with serious entrepreneurial ambitions.”

Many of the interviews included in this book are high-level conversations with extremely smart engineers and scientists about a topic some readers might feel is beyond them. But even the techie talks in this book are surprisingly accessible — and Ford helps readers gear up with an introduction that includes a great basic AI/ML vocabulary list.

Among the marquee names on Ford’s interview list is inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, who is probably best-known as the author of “The Singularity is Near” (Penguin Books, September 2006) and “How to Create a Mind” (Penguin Books, August 2013). Kurzweil is currently director of Engineering at Google, but his long resume is, well, Wikipedia-worthy. (He also maintains the Accelerating Intelligence Web site that’s well worth a look.) Another is Andrew Ng, the co-founder of Coursera who also led the Google Brain Team. Also, there’s a conversation with Jeffrey Dean, Google senior fellow and current head of AI and Google Brain.

[. . .]

One of the things about this book that will make it stand out from the sky-high-and-growing stack of publications on this newly popular subject is that it demonstrates, with compelling conversations that, at least for now, there’s really no consensus among AI mavens about where these technologies are leading us and when we’ll get there.

“Their differences on some very important things was truly striking,” Ford said. “For example, the one question I asked everyone, of course, was ‘When will we achieve human-level AI.’ It’s really the most fascinating question of all, and the predictions ranged from Rodney Brooks’ (chairman of Rethink Robotics) estimate of nearly 200 years to Ray Kurzweil’s estimate of 11 years.”

“One thing they all agreed on to some extent,” Ford added, “is that AI is going to be tremendously disruptive. Everyone agreed that its potential impact on jobs and the economy is not overhyped, but very real. If you look at the improving dexterity of the robots in, for example, the Amazon warehouses. Within five years or so, those environments are probably going to be a lot less human-labor-intensive. For people who can learn these technologies, the opportunities are there. Some of those folks are making millions, but it’s rare that you can take a fast-food worker and turn him or her into a deep learning expert.” (Continues)

America’s automated AI future does not need low-skilled, minimally educated Third-Worlders like the Hondurans now flooding the border demanding admittance as immigrants.

It has been forecast by various tech experts that a big chunk of jobs will be transferred to smart machines over the coming years, one being the 2013 prediction of Oxford University researchers that nearly half of American jobs were vulnerable to machine or software replacement within 20 years.

So paying attention to the coming automation revolution makes sense for our national plans about the future. For example, America won’t need to be importing a million immigrant workers a year when machines will soon be doing the jobs.

Automation will revolutionize retail for shoppers and workers; for example, the machine shown below replaces a greeter and clerk in Lowe’s hardware stores.

Martin Ford was recently interviewed by Retail Touch Points, a business website, about certain automation applications and an update about the technology.

Exclusive Q&A: Which Retail Jobs Are Safe From A Robot Takeover?, Retail Touch Points, September 5, 2018

In an exclusive interview with Retail TouchPoints, Ford identifies the advances in robotics and AI that are accelerating the fastest. He also identifies a selection of job categories that are safe from the march of automation — at least for now.

Retail TouchPoints (RTP): You write in Rise Of The Robots that warehouse work and fast food are two places where we’re already seeing the impact of robotics on employment. Has that trend continued since the book came out in 2015?

Martin Ford: There have been advances in both areas, but the progress has had the most practical applications in warehouse work. You can find videos on YouTube showing robots moving boxes around. Nearly all the main distribution warehouses are automated to some extent, for example by bringing shelves to workers who then reach in and grab the items they need. I really think Amazon’s warehouses will get more efficient and less labor-intensive, which directly impacts Walmart.

In order to respond, traditional retailers with stores also will have to become more efficient. Walmart and others have been testing robots for taking store inventory by counting the things that are on the store shelves. Part of the nature of robotics is that it’s easier to make one designed just to observe something, versus building a robot that physically does something like pick up a box. Eventually, however, robots will be unloading trucks or putting items on shelves, particularly in areas where the products are standardized. That’s probably inevitable.

In the fast food area, there are at least three startups in terms of actually preparing food. Momentum Machines, now called Creator, has a robot that shapes burgers from freshly ground meat and grills them to order, and it can produce 360 burgers per hour. They just opened a storefront in San Francisco in order to test the technology. There’s also a company called Zume that is using robots to make pizzas. Their business model is to put the uncooked pizzas in a van equipped with an oven and have it cooked while it’s on the way to the delivery destination, so that it’s virtually right out of the oven when you get it.

RTP: You also write about the impact of cloud robotics, which migrates the intelligence needed to animate mobile robots to a centralized hub, as a technology that’s likely to affect jobs. Why is this technology important?

Ford: Some people say ‘Well, I might lose my job doing such-and-such, but I can get a job fixing the robots.’ It’s true that repair and maintenance will create some jobs, but certainly not as many as will be lost. Take the Redbox video boxes, which can sense when there’s a mechanical or software issue with one of them and send an alert about that. All of these types of systems will be built in a way that’s very modular and easy to maintain, probably remotely and in some cases autonomously. That’s a part of the business model.

RTP: Are there jobs where we might be surprised to see robots, AI or other technologies replacing humans?

Ford: People have been biased toward the idea of robots taking away blue-collar jobs, like warehouse workers, or truck drivers with self-driving vehicles. There’s not enough focus on the person that sits in a cubicle, whose job is a lot easier to automate in many ways. For one thing, as opposed to a self-driving car, if the machine makes a mistake, nobody gets injured or killed. People who are analysts cranking out reports, or putting data into an understandable format, in areas like accounting, finance and banking — all of these jobs will be increasingly susceptible to becoming automated.

We’re already seeing it in customer service. When you call a company for technical support, it’s increasingly likely that you will be talking to a machine, and it’s not clear whether that will be disclosed to the consumer. These solutions could get good enough so that people wouldn’t be able to tell, especially when the conversations are limited in terms of the topic areas.

RTP: Are there retail jobs that might be considered “safe” from automation?

Ford: Jobs involving creative and strategic thinking are one area. Another is jobs involving interacting with people, particularly if you need to build a sophisticated relationship, as in high-end retail. Another area is jobs where there’s a lot of mobility and dexterity involved. Outside of retail that would be electricians and plumbers, but even something like stocking shelves — particularly in a smaller store that has a lot of different products and different-sized shelves — will still need people. Also, the person that goes into the fitting room to restock shelves with clothes that are all in a jumble — pretty much anything that requires flexibility and dexterity in unpredictable environments is fairly safe.

RTP: What are some of the likely effects of a jobless future?

Ford: Workers are consumers, and the main way we get money into the hands of these consumers is their jobs. As these jobs go away or as wages fall, things become increasingly unequal. We’re already seeing the impact of inequality — I’ve seen surveys saying that the average person would not be able to come up with $500 in case they needed to fix a car or had medical expenses. If people have no discretionary income, they’re not driving the economy, because these people are really only buying essentials. (Continues)