For whom the robot's bell tolls

Author's bleak warning suggests a world where many of us are idle. Yang Yang reports.

If you think you are safe from the invading army of robots just because you are highly skilled, and that it is unskilled workers whom these mechanical soldiers will kill, you had better put your thinking cap and helmet back on.

As technology advances rapidly, robots are replacing more people in various jobs, not only low-skilled ones such as putting in screws or cleaning floors, but higher-skilled ones such as driving cars, says Martin Ford in his book Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of Jobless Future, a Chinese translation of which was published last month.