Is a robot going to steal your job? Posed like this, the “fourth industrial revolution” looks relentlessly negative. We are all familiar with the dystopian scenario. Mass unemployment, accelerated inequality, widespread redundancies and workers left without purpose as the machines take over. This bleak picture troubles those who look beyond short-term political cycles at how technological trends will shape our society and our economy in the decades to come.
But let me ask a slightly different question. What mundane tasks would you willingly pass off to a friendly robot helper? What don’t you like doing at work — organising your calendar? Checking for meeting rooms? Filling out forms? And what would dumping these tasks — on to an artificial intelligence underling — free you to do more of in your work? The stuff you enjoy, probably, and the bits that are actually productive.
The truth is that automation and AI are coming (indeed, they are here) whether we like it or not. We don’t really have a choice. But that is not to say that we lack all agency about when it comes, how work will change or the impact of the coming revolution. Whether the inevitable robots replace us at work or make our work happier and more rewarding — that is in our hands.