Automation in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

“Larry Liu dissects the rhetoric regarding the future of work as the AI drumbeat grows ever louder. He insightfully analyzes the competing narratives that are likely to shape our understanding of the role AI and other emerging technologies will play in our society. Liu effectively brings the rich history of debates about automation to bear on current conversations. Rather than assuming technology is an irresistible force, Liu helps the reader ask, ‘Whose vision of emerging technologies will prevail?’”

- Jerry Jacobs, Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania

“In Automation in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Larry Liu conceptualizes automation as a socially constructed discourse shaped by competing ideological orientations and institutional interests. Synthesizing historical analysis with contemporary case studies across labor, policy, and media domains, Liu delineates four dominant frameworks—activist, resigned, status quo, and futurist—that structure public understanding of technological change and its implications for the future of work. By theorizing automation through the lenses of sociotechnical imaginaries, expectations, and power, this highly informative, easily accessible, and sufficiently nuanced book offers scholars and policymakers a rigorous framework for interpreting how societies negotiate the political, economic, and normative stakes of AI-driven transformation.”

- Richard K. Caputo, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Social Policy & Research, Yeshiva University

“Treating AI as a 21st Century version of the steam engine, Larry Liu brilliantly analyzes how we are reacting to automation and its challenges. Beginning with a succinct account of where we are now, Liu defines the different perspectives from fears to aspirations and provides a guidebook as to the rhetoric and the reality of our new “industrial revolution”.

- Miguel Centeno, Professor of Sociology, Princeton University

“This book addresses what is perhaps the fundamental problem of our time—the advance of artificial intelligence and the possibility that it will substitute human labor and, eventually, humans themselves. Liu outlines four alternative positions on this issue and documents them with a wealth on examples.

Early forms of class struggle are being substituted by a novel form in which the powers-that-be in the capitalist world pit the incredible advances in technology against living humans and their chances for survival in the future. Liu has rendered us a great service by documenting this struggle and the forms it is now taking head on.”

- Alejandro Portes, Professor of Sociology, Princeton University and University of Miami

“The consequences of technologies such as AI and automation are not inevitable but are socially constructed based on competing narratives. This timely and historically grounded book identifies and evaluates four competing perspectives about how these technologies have shaped work in the past and might do so in the future.”

- Arne L. Kalleberg, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

"Larry Liu reminds us that our choices, not "impersonal" technology, drive automation, artificial intelligence, and work's future. This is empowering--and scary."

- Cory Isaacs, Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University, City Manager of Hillsboro, Wisconsin