The last few months have been by far the most exciting of my 17 years working on artificial intelligence. Among many other advances, OpenAI's ChatGPT – a type of AI known as a large language model – smashed records in January to become the fastest-growing consumer application of all time, achieving 100 million users in two months. No one knows for certain what's going to happen next with AI. There's too much going on, on too many fronts, behind too many closed doors. However, we do know that AI is now in the hands of the world, and, as a consequence, the world seems likely to be transformed.

MILES O'BRIEN: We're going to get a better picture tomorrow of how strong job creation is when the monthly employment report comes out. But whatever that snapshot looks like, there are concerns about the rise of robotics and automation, and what that means for the future of the work force. Our economics correspondent, Paul Solman, has been exploring that subject. PAUL SOLMAN: In Silicon Valley, author Vivek Wadhwa says he already lives in the future. OK, so, your car can open the garage door and greet you in the driveway?

Could advances in technology like big data, machine learning and robotics replace jobs faster than new ones can be created? How should we understand the impact of automation on the labour market? In the first in a series of podcasts exploring the big shifts which are underway in the nature of work Matthew Taylor is joined by Michael Osborne, Ryan Avent and Judy Wajcman to discuss how we should understand the impact of automation and what if anything governments should do to respond. Michael Osborne is Co-Director of the Oxford Martin programme on Technology and Employment. In a widely cited study in 2013 he estimated 47 per cent of US occupations have a high risk of being automated.

Mind Foundry has raised 1.2m in seed funding from private investors and investment company Oxford Sciences Innovation to commercialise the technology. The company's technology is based on advanced algorithms and techniques developed by Professors Stephen Roberts and Michael Osborne (pictured here), who lead Machine Learning research at Oxford's Department of Engineering Science. Mind Foundry will build on over 25 years of academic research and applied commercial consulting engagements within the Machine Learning Research Group, a specialist research team within Information Engineering at the University's Department of Engineering Science. Stephen Roberts commented: "We live in an era in which the success of organisations and advances in science and technology are increasingly reliant on the fast and accurate analysis of data. But driving these advances is a deluge of data which is outstripping the computational ability to process it, let alone act upon it. We live in an age of big data – but not necessarily big insight. Mind Foundry has the capability to turn this data into actionable insight."