We Are Not Machines by Sarah O’Connor review – can dignity at work survive the tech revolution?

A Financial Times journalist ponders the future of labour in world increasingly dominated by AI and automation

It’s never been easy to land and keep a decent job. But it feels like it’s getting harder. In June, the number of job vacancies in the UK fell to a five-year low; headlines warn of a looming AI-employment shock. What might the future of work look like – and who or what will shape its terms? In her new book, Sarah O’Connor goes looking for answers in the modern collision of artificial intelligence, automation, and human labour.

This clash between human and machine – and the fight to secure decent working conditions even as the pressure to maximise production mounts – is nothing new. Neither are concerns about the health risks of repetitive factory work or the loss of creative craftsmanship and independent judgment in the wake of mechanisation. O’Connor has been a reporter at the Financial Times for nearly two decades, and although We Are Not Machines looks to the future, many of the threats AI poses to workers’ dignity and safety look a lot like reconfigurations of old battles. The book takes its title from the signs striking Swedish miners carried in 1969 as they protested their employers’ new methods of monitoring their output. “Vi är ej maskiner”, their signs read: “We are not machines.”
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