Stop Ignoring the Robot in the Room

There’s been a lot of talk about jobs and populism vs globalism, but the truth is that automation is killing jobs faster than they can be outsourced. The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert looks at a few recent books to try to give some clues to the question a lot of people have: How long will it be before you lose your job to a robot? These stories always remind me of the old Woody Allen routine: “My father had worked for the same firm for twelve years. They fired him. They replaced him with a tiny gadget, this big, that does everything my father does, only it does it much better. The depressing thing is, my mother ran out and bought one.”

+ “And you’re doing well right now and I’m very honored by the bounce. They’re all talking about the bounce. So right now everybody in this room has to like me, at least a little bit.” Yes, the techies went to Trump Tower.

+ Elon Musk and Travis Kalanick are joining Donald Trump’s strategic and policy forum.

+ The Atlantic: Why Trump and the Tech Industry Are on a Collision Course.

+ Uber’s self-driving cars just rolled into San Francisco (even if the DMV didn’t approve them). This might not change much. As far as I can tell, most San Francisco drivers already seem to assume their cars are self-driving.