Last week, the consulting firm McKinsey released its latest report on the future of work, this time in relation to women. It described how robots are performing human tasks at an accelerating rate — and dolefully warned that “160m women could lose their current jobs to automation” in the next 12 years.
McKinsey stressed that automation also creates jobs. But I doubt that point was widely heard. After all, we live in an age when workers and politicians in the US and Europe are terrified that automation will undermine employment — a fear that may even be contributing to the rise of populism and extremist politics.
But as the hand-wringing about digitisation continues apace, it is worth looking at one country where robots do not seem to inspire quite so much fear: Japan. Last week, I made a trip to Tokyo and was struck by how much more positive the public debate about automation seems.