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Algorithms that can detect cancers as accurately as trained pathologists.
Personal AI assistants that can mimic human voices to make bookings on behalf of their users. Machines that can lay bricks at a rate six times faster than human labourers.
The number of technological accomplishments grows by the day. But what do these developments mean for workers?

https://www.thersa.org/globalassets/pdfs/reports/rsa_field-guide-future-work.pdf

Pick up any newspaper or watch any news item on the subject and you are likely to be presented with one of two opinions.

Either that we are on the cusp of cat­a­stroph­ic job loss­es and eco­nom­ic mis­ery for the mass­es. Or that these new tech­nolo­gies will super­charge pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, lead­ing to a rise in liv­ing stan­dards and an abun­dance of good qual­i­ty jobs. 

High pro­file cheer­lead­ers on each side of the debate eager­ly point to sta­tis­ti­cal analy­ses which back their vision of the future. The tus­sle between these two sides has proven a fas­ci­nat­ing spec­ta­cle for the lay observ­er – cer­tain­ly enough to war­rant reg­u­lar media head­lines. But to the RSA, which has been explor­ing the impact of tech­nol­o­gy on jobs for some time, the qual­i­ty of pub­lic debate leaves much to be desired.

At least four major short­com­ings can be identified:

  1. The first is that com­men­ta­tors tend to fix­ate on just a hand­ful of tech­nolo­gies – name­ly arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and robot­ics – while pay­ing lit­tle atten­tion to the less glam­orous but still pow­er­ful inno­va­tions like e‑commerce plat­forms, the inter­net of things, dis­trib­uted ledgers, cloud com­put­ing and smartphones.
  2. The sec­ond is the relent­less focus on automa­tion, as though this was the only way tech­nol­o­gy can shape the lives of work­ers. Machines are also chang­ing recruit­ment prac­tices, facil­i­tat­ing sur­veil­lance and mon­i­tor­ing, alter­ing the nature of busi­ness mod­els and restruc­tur­ing indus­tries (with new tech­nol­o­gy often aid­ing mar­ket concentration).
  3. The third is that analy­ses of the effects of tech­nol­o­gy too often dwell on what is the­o­ret­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble while ignor­ing what is actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing. We hear of break­throughs in indi­vid­ual tech­nolo­gies like autonomous vehi­cles and per­son­al voice assis­tants. But sel­dom do we learn whether these same inno­va­tions are adopt­ed in the real world.
  4. And fourth, we pay too lit­tle atten­tion to the sys­temic effects of tech­nol­o­gy, such as how its adop­tion in one cor­ner of the econ­o­my can affect the lives of work­ers in dif­fer­ent sec­tors. An exam­ple is the phe­nom­e­na of ‘recy­cled demand’, where­by the deploy­ment of tech­nol­o­gy in one indus­try leads to cost sav­ings for con­sumers, which frees up cash to spur demand (and poten­tial­ly job growth) in anoth­er part of the economy.

These short­com­ings can­not go unaddressed.

The qual­i­ty of the con­ver­sa­tion about tech­nol­o­gy mat­ters great­ly to our abil­i­ty to pre­pare it. The civ­il ser­vant in the Trea­sury dic­tat­ing tax pol­i­cy, the FE col­lege leader rethink­ing their skills cur­ric­u­la, the cor­po­rate HR chief recon­sid­er­ing their employ­ee wel­fare pro­gramme – all are sus­cep­ti­ble to mak­ing bad deci­sions with bad intel­li­gence. Which brings us to the pur­pose of this essay series: to break out of the same over­worn ques­tions, and give more air­time to alter­na­tive and thought­ful per­spec­tives on how tech­nol­o­gy might shape the world of work. A com­mon theme in this series is the shift­ing sands of pow­er. Nico­las Col­in argues that the emer­gence of the dig­i­tal econ­o­my has put con­sumers at the top of the food chain, and it is they who are now squeez­ing con­ces­sions out of work­ers rather than employ­ers. Oth­er con­trib­u­tors turn to the famil­iar theme of automa­tion, but with a fresh per­spec­tive. Calum Chace argues that automa­tion will be a relent­less job killer, but that it could also dras­ti­cal­ly reduce the cost of liv­ing for those on low incomes. Nick Srnicek sim­i­lar­ly sees the brighter side of a new machine age, believ­ing that it could ush­er in a 4‑day work­ing week. Astra Tay­lor, mean­while, writes that automa­tion is most­ly a cha­rade – a ploy by firms to look sophis­ti­cat­ed while humans con­tin­ue to do grunt work behind the scenes.

Sev­er­al con­trib­u­tors pre­dict that work will be boun­ti­ful in the years to come. But they also warn that such work will be high­ly scru­ti­nised. Phoebe Moore con­tem­plates a bleak future where work­ers find them­selves at the tyran­ny of a per­va­sive sur­veil­lance sys­tem – one where mon­i­tor­ing tools not just assess work­er per­for­mance but watch every aspect of their move­ment. Azeem Azhar echoes these warn­ings, sug­gest­ing that it may not be long before most of us have a rat­ing attached to our name, which will deter­mine eli­gi­bil­i­ty for dif­fer­ent job plat­forms and even goods and ser­vices like hous­ing. We are remind­ed, too, that the UK is not alone in feel­ing the effects of tech­nol­o­gy. Mark Gra­ham writes about the emer­gence of a plan­e­tary labour mar­ket, where new tech­nolo­gies have allowed more jobs to be out­sourced from devel­oped to devel­op­ing economies – includ­ing the gris­ly work of con­tent mod­er­a­tion. Urvashi Ane­ja, our final con­trib­u­tor, pon­ders what a new machine age will mean for India’s 1.3 bil­lion cit­i­zens. Will it fast track social mobil­i­ty, or rather exac­er­bate the infor­mal econ­o­my and lock in exist­ing class and caste divides? Some may feel the addi­tion­al per­spec­tives of these writ­ers com­pli­cate rather than clar­i­fy the impact of tech­nol­o­gy on work. But that is pre­cise­ly the point. Too often we yearn for neat fore­casts that aim to tell us exact­ly how the future will play out (‘X mil­lion jobs to go by 2040’). In fact, we should be con­tem­plat­ing and prepar­ing for mul­ti­ple even­tu­al­i­ties. The humil­i­ty this requires may not come eas­i­ly to those used to mak­ing con­fi­dent pre­dic­tions, but it is the only sen­si­ble way of ready­ing our­selves for the future. Our aim with this col­lec­tion is to offer an eclec­tic, expan­sive, thought-pro­vok­ing, though by no means exhaus­tive pic­ture of the future of work. We hope read­ers will enjoy the plu­ral­i­ty of per­spec­tives pre­sent­ed, and we would encour­age you to take a moment to think about how they might inform prac­tices in your own work­place, pro­fes­sion or indus­try. Far from being a man­i­festo for fatal­ism, this pam­phlet should rather be read as a call to action. After all, the point is not sim­ply to sit pas­sive­ly and wait for the future to hit us, but to active­ly shape it in the way we see fit.