Hello, I'm Simon Long, the Economist's finance editor, and you're listening to a special edition of Money Talks,

where we've done some summer stock taking and

look back over some of our most popular items of the year so far and in case we've

missed anything please let us know you can find us on Twitter at economist radio or email us at radio at

radio at economist.com. Technology leaders have been calling on the

United Nations to ban the development and use of killer robots.

Back in April we had a cautionary tale of our own.

We discussed a working paper which concluded that between 1990 and 2007 each industrial robot added per thousand workers

reduced employment in the US by nearly six workers. Industrial robots are most commonly

used in the car industry.

Our free exchange columnist in Washington, Ryan Avant,

discussed this age-old problem with Philip Kogan.

I think the difficult question, and this was also an issue in the 19th century is how good a job are we going to be able to do

Preparing the workers who are displaced by robots to take the new employment opportunities that are created.

And so in the Industrial Revolution,

we were pretty effective in moving people to the cities

where new jobs were being created,

in giving them education, to help them fill those new jobs were being created in giving them education to help them fill those new jobs

and in smoothing the adjustment in that way.

And even so it was still a difficult adjustment and that's why the Luddites were smashing their machines. I think it's going to be a lot

harder now to do all those things. A lot of the cities where the jobs are being created are very

expensive and so people don't want to move there. And then also, you know, someone who's

...