The robot in the office: Friend or foe?

It's easy to imagine robots as job-stealing nemeses that will ultimately unseat human workers. In an interview with Computerworld Thursday, Tom Davenport, co-author of the forthcoming book Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines, made the case for seeing artificial intelligence and robotics not as a threat in the workplace but as an advantage. As more organizations begin to adopt AI and robotic systems, workers who regard these new technologies not as murderous Cylons to be feared but as tools designed to make them more productive and efficient at their own job will fare best. "I think that in many cases, we'll be working with these machines as colleagues," Davenport told Computerworld. "I think the people who prosper will be the ones who like working with machines." This is where Computerworld trotted out the obligatory eyebrow-raising statistics: The Bank of England warned about robots assuming half of all U.S. and British jobs during the coming 20 years, leaving 95 million people unemployed.