Listen free for 30 days
-
Rise of the Robots
- Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Science & Engineering, Engineering
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Listen with a free trial
Buy Now for £18.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Rule of the Robots
- How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Everything
- By: Martin Ford
- Narrated by: Ian Carlsen
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this sequel to his prescient New York Times best seller Rise of the Robots, Martin Ford presents us with a striking vision of the very near future. He argues that AI is a uniquely powerful technology, a kind of 'electricity of intelligence' that is altering every dimension of human life, often for the better with advanced science being done by machines who can solve problems humans can not. AI has the potential to help us fight climate change or the next pandemic, but it also has a capacity for profound harm.
-
Alan Turing: The Enigma
- By: Andrew Hodges
- Narrated by: Gordon Griffin
- Length: 30 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that the British mathematician Alan Turing (1912-1954) saved the Allies from the Nazis, invented the computer and artificial intelligence, and anticipated gay liberation by decades--all before his suicide at age forty-one. This classic biography of the founder of computer science, reissued on the centenary of his birth with a substantial new preface by the author, is the definitive account of an extraordinary mind and life.
-
-
One for the intellectuals
- By Mrs on 12-06-13
-
AI 2041
- Ten Visions for Our Future
- By: Kai-Fu Lee, Chen Qiufan
- Narrated by: Feodor Chin, James Chen, Soneela Nankani, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this provocative, utterly original work of 'scientific fiction', Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China and best-selling author of AI Superpowers, joins forces with celebrated novelist Chen Qiufan to imagine our world in 2041 and how it will be shaped by AI. In 10 gripping short stories, set 20 years in the future, they introduce listeners to an array of eye-opening 2041 settings.
-
-
long but very eye opening
- By David Wylie on 06-01-22
-
Fermat's Last Theorem
- The Story of a Riddle That Confounded the World's Greatest Minds for 358 Years
- By: Simon Singh
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
'I have a truly marvellous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.' It was with these words, written in the 1630s, that Pierre de Fermat intrigued and infuriated the mathematics community. For over 350 years, proving Fermat's Last Theorem was the most notorious unsolved mathematical problem, a puzzle whose basics most children could grasp but whose solution eluded the greatest minds in the world.
-
-
Wow...
- By Nathan on 17-08-17
-
Indian Givers
- How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World
- By: Jack Weatherford
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After 500 years, the world's huge debt to the wisdom of the Indians of the Americas has finally been explored in all its vivid drama by anthropologist Jack Weatherford. He traces the crucial contributions made by the Indians to our federal system of government, our democratic institutions, modern medicine, agriculture, architecture, and ecology, and in this astonishing, ground-breaking book takes a giant step toward recovering a true American history.
-
-
Inaccurate and biased
- By Amazon Customer on 26-11-21
-
The Profit Paradox
- How Thriving Firms Threaten the Future of Work
- By: Jan Eeckhout
- Narrated by: Zeb Soanes
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This audiobook narrated by Zeb Soanes offers a pioneering account of the surging global tide of market power and how it stifles workers around the world.
-
Rule of the Robots
- How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Everything
- By: Martin Ford
- Narrated by: Ian Carlsen
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this sequel to his prescient New York Times best seller Rise of the Robots, Martin Ford presents us with a striking vision of the very near future. He argues that AI is a uniquely powerful technology, a kind of 'electricity of intelligence' that is altering every dimension of human life, often for the better with advanced science being done by machines who can solve problems humans can not. AI has the potential to help us fight climate change or the next pandemic, but it also has a capacity for profound harm.
-
Alan Turing: The Enigma
- By: Andrew Hodges
- Narrated by: Gordon Griffin
- Length: 30 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that the British mathematician Alan Turing (1912-1954) saved the Allies from the Nazis, invented the computer and artificial intelligence, and anticipated gay liberation by decades--all before his suicide at age forty-one. This classic biography of the founder of computer science, reissued on the centenary of his birth with a substantial new preface by the author, is the definitive account of an extraordinary mind and life.
-
-
One for the intellectuals
- By Mrs on 12-06-13
-
AI 2041
- Ten Visions for Our Future
- By: Kai-Fu Lee, Chen Qiufan
- Narrated by: Feodor Chin, James Chen, Soneela Nankani, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this provocative, utterly original work of 'scientific fiction', Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China and best-selling author of AI Superpowers, joins forces with celebrated novelist Chen Qiufan to imagine our world in 2041 and how it will be shaped by AI. In 10 gripping short stories, set 20 years in the future, they introduce listeners to an array of eye-opening 2041 settings.
-
-
long but very eye opening
- By David Wylie on 06-01-22
-
Fermat's Last Theorem
- The Story of a Riddle That Confounded the World's Greatest Minds for 358 Years
- By: Simon Singh
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
'I have a truly marvellous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.' It was with these words, written in the 1630s, that Pierre de Fermat intrigued and infuriated the mathematics community. For over 350 years, proving Fermat's Last Theorem was the most notorious unsolved mathematical problem, a puzzle whose basics most children could grasp but whose solution eluded the greatest minds in the world.
-
-
Wow...
- By Nathan on 17-08-17
-
Indian Givers
- How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World
- By: Jack Weatherford
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After 500 years, the world's huge debt to the wisdom of the Indians of the Americas has finally been explored in all its vivid drama by anthropologist Jack Weatherford. He traces the crucial contributions made by the Indians to our federal system of government, our democratic institutions, modern medicine, agriculture, architecture, and ecology, and in this astonishing, ground-breaking book takes a giant step toward recovering a true American history.
-
-
Inaccurate and biased
- By Amazon Customer on 26-11-21
-
The Profit Paradox
- How Thriving Firms Threaten the Future of Work
- By: Jan Eeckhout
- Narrated by: Zeb Soanes
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This audiobook narrated by Zeb Soanes offers a pioneering account of the surging global tide of market power and how it stifles workers around the world.
-
The Economic Singularity
- Artificial Intelligence and the Death of Capitalism
- By: Calum Chace
- Narrated by: Calum Chace
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Economic Singularity is the time when most people cannot find employment, because machines can do everything that humans can do for money cheaper, faster, and better than they can. Some people say this will never happen, but most AI professionals think it will, although they disagree about when.
-
Behave
- By: Robert M. Sapolsky
- Narrated by: Michael Goldstrom
- Length: 26 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We are capable of savage acts of violence but also spectacular feats of kindness: is one side of our nature destined to win out over the other? Every act of human behaviour has multiple layers of causation, spiralling back seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, even centuries, right back to the dawn of time and the origins of our species. In the epic sweep of history, how does our biology affect the arc of war and peace, justice and persecution? How have our brains evolved alongside our cultures?
-
-
Slow to start but it all comes together
- By Mark on 25-08-18
-
The Growth Delusion
- Why Economists Are Getting It Wrong and What We Can Do About It
- By: David Pilling
- Narrated by: Elliot Hill
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A revelatory and entertaining book about the pitfalls of how we measure our economy and how to correct them, by an award-winning editor of The Financial Times. According to GDP, the economy is in a golden era: economic growth has risen steadily over the past 70 years and shows no sign of stopping. But if this is the case, why are we living in such fractured times, with global populism on the rise and wealth inequality as stark as ever?
-
-
Great book made even better by great narration
- By KF on 08-08-18
-
Complexity
- The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos
- By: M. Mitchel Waldrop
- Narrated by: Mikael Naramore
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a rarified world of scientific research, a revolution has been brewing. Its activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics and pony-tailed graduates, mathematicians, and computer scientists from all over the world. They have formed an iconoclastic think-tank and their radical idea is to create a new science: complexity. They want to know how a primordial soup of simple molecules managed to turn itself into the first living cell--and what the origin of life some four billion years ago can tell us about the process of technological innovation today.
-
-
A simply told story of complexity
- By Tim on 21-07-20
-
13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Intriguing Scientific Mysteries
- By: Michael Brooks
- Narrated by: Matt Addis
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Science starts to get interesting when things don'’t make sense. Even today, there are experimental results that the most brilliant scientists can neither explain nor dismiss. In the past, similar anomalies have revolutionised our world: in the 16th century, a set of celestial irregularities led Copernicus to realise that the Earth goes around the sun and not the reverse. In 13 Things That Don'’t Make Sense, Michael Brooks meets thirteen modern-day anomalies that may become tomorrow'’s breakthroughs.
-
-
Really interesting listen!
- By Lillian on 27-03-11
-
Bad Pharma
- How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients
- By: Ben Goldacre
- Narrated by: Jot Davies
- Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
'Bad Science’ hilariously exposed the tricks that quacks and journalists use to distort science, becoming a 400,000 copy bestseller. Now Ben Goldacre puts the $600bn global pharmaceutical industry under the microscope. What he reveals is a fascinating, terrifying mess.
-
-
Not the critical appraisal Pharma wanted
- By Alex Moore on 06-02-15
-
Britain Alone
- The Path from Suez to Brexit
- By: Philip Stephens
- Narrated by: Sean Barrett
- Length: 13 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1962 the American statesman Dean Acheson famously charged that Britain had lost an empire and failed to find a new role. Nearly 60 years later the rebuke rings true again. Britain's postwar search for its place in the world has vexed prime ministers and government since the nation's great victory in 1945: the cost of winning the war was giving up the empire. After the humiliation of Anthony Eden's Suez expedition, Britain seemed for a time to have found an answer.
-
-
Excellent book, very tired performer
- By Mats on 29-04-21
-
In the Plex
- How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
- By: Steven Levy
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 19 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indispensable part of our lives. How has Google done it? Veteran technology reporter Steven Levy was granted unprecedented access to the company, and in this revelatory book he takes listeners inside Google headquarters - the Googleplex - to explain how Google works.
-
-
Interesting but dated
- By Spiky Potplant on 13-07-19
-
Whatever Happened to Tradition?
- History, Belonging and the Future of the West
- By: Tim Stanley
- Narrated by: Tim Stanley
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The West feels lost. Brexit, Trump, the coronavirus: we hurtle from one crisis to another, lacking definition, terrified that our best days are behind us. The central argument of this book is that we can only face the future with hope if we have a proper sense of tradition - political, social and religious. We ignore our past at our peril. The problem, argues Tim Stanley, is that the Western tradition is anti-tradition, that we have a habit of discarding old ways and old knowledge, leaving us uncertain how to act or, even, of who we really are.
-
-
Enjoyable and thought provoking
- By Alan Hughes on 08-04-22
-
The Future of the Professions
- How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts
- By: Richard Susskind, Daniel Susskind
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This book predicts the decline of today's professions and describes the people and systems that will replace them. In an Internet society, according to Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind, we will neither need nor want doctors, teachers, accountants, architects, the clergy, consultants, lawyers, and many others to work as they did in the 20th century.
-
-
Heavy but interesting
- By Clay on 20-08-19
-
Ten Drugs
- How Plants, Powders, and Pills Have Shaped the History of Medicine
- By: Thomas Hager
- Narrated by: Angelo Di Loreto
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beginning with opium, the “joy plant,” which has been used for 10,000 years, Thomas Hager tells a captivating story of medicine. His subjects include the largely forgotten female pioneer who introduced smallpox inoculation to Britain, the infamous knockout drops, the first antibiotic, which saved countless lives, the first antipsychotic, which helped empty public mental hospitals, Viagra, statins, and the new frontier of monoclonal antibodies. This is a deep, wide-ranging, and wildly entertaining book.
-
-
Fascinating!
- By Amazon Customer on 22-07-20
-
23 Things They Don't Tell You about Capitalism
- By: Ha-Joon Chang
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
If you've wondered how we did not see the economic collapse coming, Ha-Joon Chang knows the answer: We didn't ask what they didn't tell us about capitalism. This is a lighthearted book with a serious purpose: to question the assumptions behind the dogma and sheer hype that the dominant school of neoliberal economists-the apostles of the freemarket-have spun since the Age of Reagan.
-
-
Calm, measured, pure genius
- By Amazon Customer on 19-08-18
Summary
Winner of the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award 2015.
In a world of self-driving cars and big data, smart algorithms and Siri, we know that artificial intelligence is getting smarter every day. Though all these nifty devices and programs might make our lives easier, they're also well on their way to making "good" jobs obsolete. A computer winning Jeopardy might seem like a trivial, if impressive, feat, but the same technology is making paralegals redundant as it undertakes electronic discovery and is soon to do the same for radiologists. And that, no doubt, will only be the beginning.
In Silicon Valley the phrase disruptive technology is tossed around on a casual basis. No one doubts that technology has the power to devastate entire industries and upend various sectors of the job market. But Rise of the Robots asks a bigger question: can accelerating technology disrupt our entire economic system to the point where a fundamental restructuring is required? Companies like Facebook and YouTube may need only a handful of employees to achieve enormous valuations, but what will be the fate of those of us not lucky or smart enough to have gotten into the great shift from human labor to computation?
Rise of the Robots is a both an exploration of this new technology and a call to arms to address its implications. Written by a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur, this is an audiobook that cannot be dismissed as the ranting of a Luddite or an outsider. Ford has seen the future, and he knows that for some of us, the rise of the robots will be very frightening indeed.
Critic reviews
"The elephant in the room of artificial intelligence is mass obsolescence of the human workforce it threatens to supplant. Ford stares the elephant in the face." ( Observer)
"Packed with irresistible gee-whizz facts but...also anxious about what might happen next, especially to human employment...well worth reading." ( Guardian)
More from the same
What listeners say about Rise of the Robots
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 12-05-16
Long But Too Economical
A very relevant book if your concerned about what the world might look like in 2030 or 2100. There were some good leads, with references to recent and future technology and its effects on society - which was what I was really interested in. However, it was too long with expositions of the author's ideas on quite specific economic examples relevant particularly to the US, such as personal theories on possible improvements to the American healthcare model. The book touched on aspects of what sort of jobs might replaced by automaton in the future and for instance basic trends in nanotechnology, robots and more so computing and AI, but for me it did not go into the dilemma about future employment or pragmatic day to day existential (or philosophical) issues enough.
14 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Julian
- 21-06-16
An influential book for our time
Very good factual base and first degree impact assessment. A very useful read to understand trends.
As collateral benefit it helped me understand why wealth concentration is an issue.
Key takeout for me: we -economic conservative-types- usually view the recipients of benefits in the wagon and the workers doing the pulling. With machines doing more and more of the pulling we will increasingly find people we know, and enen "us" in tge wagon. The AI / automation revolution is here, re thinking our social construct is imperative.
The discussion on the US health system was, in my view, too long.
10 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Charles B.
- 17-05-16
Important message well presented
What did you like most about Rise of the Robots?
Well supported argument explaining the impact of technology on employment and economy now and in the future. With two sons going through university, this has help me articulate concerns I had for their futures.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Rise of the Robots?
Explanation of how even highly educated graduates will struggle to find work as the power of technology increases
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes
8 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Robert
- 22-08-16
excellent
a book everyone should read! outlining a societal issue for us all to address with the ever increasing pace of technology change.
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Mr Alex GOODWILLE
- 26-05-16
Very good lead up, poor ending.
Martin Ford does well to create a picture of the automaton to come but ends poorly with not much discussion about the future possible solutions.
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 19-07-16
Awesome
Great insight into the future of techology and humanity. A must read for any technology and AI enthusiast.
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Rich H
- 06-07-16
Wow.
Such a shame these impending and important issues aren't bring discussed by any politician currently
looking to be elected...
7 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Adsy
- 09-09-16
the harbinger of doom
great for 2/3 of the book, enlightening, interesting, frightening, and sobering. not quite uplifting. the lengthy section on US healthcare system was strangely out of kilter with the premise of the book, and frankly boring. so I skipped it. the final sections on economic policy and policy in a future state were interesting but not particularly captivating. a good informative read otherwise.
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Your Boy, Max
- 09-08-16
pretty cool stuff, definately worth a listen
Good book, well writen and explores a lot of important topics. I feel towards the end it focuses too much on the economic and political implications of robotics and technology's.
Although definately worth a read.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Thiago
- 24-10-20
loved it!
Despite being published a few years ago and obviously slightly limited to some of the latest developments in AI, this book offers so much information. It would be awesome if there is a continuation for this book also covering aspects of AI not only from US economy perspective but global nuances also on how AI and robotics are and will impact other continents such as Africa for example. Nevertheless it's an excellent book and one of the best reads of the year imo!!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall

- Buzz
- 30-05-18
Just not enough detail
Interesting, but a little outdated now. I would have liked more about the latest tech and what AI and robots are doing.