Robots don't just take jobs, they can help a new business grow

"Make an appointment for 4pm today with Gary," I say to my assistant as I hang up from a promising phone call with a potential client. There was a time when you had to be high up in an organisation to have an assistant. My assistant is an artificially intelligent piece of software that lives in my smart phone. It makes me wonder if technologies like these could help a business grow. A report called The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to automation was published in 2013 by researchers from Oxford University. It was used last year by the BBC to create the interactive web page, Will a robot take your job?.