This book talk is part of the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival 2022, the Oxford Martin School is the Festival Ideas Partner. Expert in the ethics of artificial intelligence Professors Carissa Veliz talks about the advance of this new technology and what it means for human beings. Most researchers at a 2015 Puerto Rico Conference thought that human level artificial intelligence would be achieved by 2060. Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and Bill Gates, have all expressed concerns about artificial intelligence. It opens doors not only to self-driving cars, but to extraordinary levels of surveillance, autonomous weapons systems, and the loss of many traditional areas of employment. It also offers huge benefits – not least the potential to solve many problems we humans have created but have so far proved unable to solve, such as climate change.

New technologies have always provoked panic about workers being replaced by machines. In the past, such fears have been misplaced, and many economists maintain that they remain so today. Yet in A World Without Work, Daniel Susskind shows why this time really is different. Advances in artificial intelligence mean that all kinds of jobs are increasingly at risk. Susskind will argue that machines no longer need to reason like us in order to outperform us.