Automation and the emergence of the empowered worker

In 2013, Carl Frey and Michael Osborne – academics at the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University – published a research paper entitled The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation? Applying a new methodology to estimate the probability of computerisation for 702 specific occupations, Frey and Osborne predicted that as many as 47% of workers in the US economy were at a high risk of being replaced by robots in the medium term. The paper shocked analysts, policy makers and the public around the world, and set the tone for a debate that has raged ever since. Artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics are already changing the world of work, and the innovation wave has barely got started. And while estimates vary about how many jobs are "at risk", and in what kinds of occupations, there is a consensus that, one way or another, the world is on the brink of major change.