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Automate This: How Algorithms Took Over Our Markets, Our Jobs, and the World

Christopher Steiner

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Founder connections

  • Thomas PeterffyFounder praise for passages about his firm
    In his 2014 shareholder letter, Peterffy points readers to Steiner’s account of the early years. This supports praise for those passages; it does not prove he read the full book or which edition he used.
    Source

Summary

Christopher Steiner examines how computer programs moved from financial trading into other kinds of work. The account follows automated decisions in markets, medicine, customer service, transport and music. It asks what happens when tasks once carried out by skilled people can be performed by software, and what roles remain for those people. This record uses the 2013 Portfolio paperback.

  • SourceAutomate This — Penguin Random House Higher Education · Title/subtitle and author block; 2013 paperback ISBN 9781591846529; About section on domains and questions examined

Why read it Our view

Use it to examine which parts of a service can become repeatable software, and how automation changes the work around it. Peterffy’s early trading operation supplies one company case, not the scope of the whole book.

Written about

  • Thomas PeterffyBook coverage of Peterffy and the firm’s early years
    Peterffy’s own shareholder letter identifies Steiner’s passages about the firm’s early years. The book examines automation across many fields; it is not a full biography.
    Source