Overview

From award-winning Financial Times journalist Sarah O'Connor, a deeply reported investigation into how AI and robotics are transforming the way we work A tsunami of 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 prize-winning Financial Times 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 O'Connor 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. Exploring questions of power, design, institutions and ideas, her reporting shows that the way technology changes the world of work is not pre-determined, but must be contested and shaped by all of us. Inspired by stories from nineteenth-century English cotton mills to twenty-first century Swedish mines, We Are Not Machines reveals how we can fight for work which is more respectful of our limits, and more worthy of our minds.

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9780241704226

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Reviews

Original and enlightening, rooted in reality and populated by people. Not many books about the labour market make you laugh and bring tears to your eyes. This one does. It’s the kind of writing that AI will never replace... She talks to miners in Sweden, care workers in the Netherlands, drivers in America and online workers everywhere from Costa Rica to the Himalayas. Out of those stories she creates a remarkable picture of what is happening to jobs -- Emma Duncan * The Times * Sarah is one of the few people who really understands how AI is changing the character of work already and what it means for all of us -- David Runciman * Past Present Future Podcast * A fierce, wise, beautiful book -- Tim Harford A lively and engaging read which teases out some compelling human stories. O'Connor describes both the peril and promise unleashed by AI - and issues a powerful call to arms for us all about how to respond. A must-read for educators, policy makers, executives and employees -- Gillian Tett No-one provides a better worms-eye view of the world of work than Sarah O'Connor. True to form, this is a brilliantly insightful grassroots account of how the revolution in AI is changing work for good (and for bad) and how practically technology might be configured to enhance our minds, bodies and souls, rather than deplete them. This holds the key to harvesting the full fruits of the fourth Industrial Revolution and securing its societal, as distinct from technological, success -- Andy Haldane An invaluable guide to one of the biggest economic stories of our age. Most books about AI lurch between hype and despair but Sarah O'Connor has captured something far rarer: a glimpse of how machines are actually reshaping our lives and livelihoods -- Ed Conway A hopeful and urgent reminder that the future of work is what we make it. Instead of speculating about what technology might do, Sarah O'Connor looks at what it is already doing to workers around the world. Her warning is important and grounded: there is a better path -- Carl Benedikt Frey, author of <i> How Progress Ends </i>

A fierce, wise, beautiful book -- Tim Harford

Author Information

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.

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