Ethical Matters: We Are Not Machines

Change, we are told, is sweeping the economy as robots and AI threaten to take over tasks done by humans.

But while we worry that we’re robotizing our work, what if the real risk is that we’re robotizing ourselves? When journalist Sarah O’Connor set out to investigate what was happening on the front lines of technological change, she found people who weren’t losing their jobs to machines, but who felt they were losing something else instead. From translators forced to edit AI output to university graduates interviewed by software and warehouse workers surrounded by robots, she heard stories of work becoming lonelier, less creative, less human. But she also found hopeful stories of jobs being made better, safer and more enjoyable – where workers haven’t rejected the new tools, but instead have learned to control them. In this talk, exploring questions of power, design, institutions and ideas, Sarah shows that the way technology changes the world of work is not pre-determined, but must be contested and shaped by all of us.

Sarah O’Connor is a columnist, reporter and associate editor at the Financial Times. She writes a weekly column focused on the world of work, as well as longer features and investigations. She has won the Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils, the Wincott Award for financial journalism, Business Commentator of the Year at the Comment Awards, Financial/Economic story of the year at the Foreign Press Awards and Business and Finance Journalist of the year at the British Press Awards.