An intriguing set of questions that is being explored by researchers across the globe and is being discussed and brainstormed in various organisations and think tanks is: "what is the future of work"; "how forthcoming AI and Automation revolution will impact on the nature and structure of work"; and "what would be the impact of these changes on the fabric of society from social, economic and political perspectives". In a 2013 study "The Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerisation?" researchers Dr Carl Benedikt Frey and Dr Michael Osborne made an important observation: about 47% jobs in the US will be lost to automation. Dr Carl Frey is the co-director of programme on technology and employment at Oxford Martin School at Oxford University. His research focuses on "how advances in digital technology are reshaping the nature of work and jobs and what that might mean for the future". In 2016, he was named the 2nd most influential young opinion leader by the Swedish business magazine Veckans Affärer.

IT IS ONE of the most widely quoted statistics of recent years. No report or conference presentation on the future of work is complete without it. Think-tanks, consultancies, government agencies and news outlets have pointed to it as evidence of an imminent jobs apocalypse. The finding--that 47% of American jobs are at high risk of automation by the mid-2030s--comes from a paper published in 2013 by two Oxford academics, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne. It has since been cited in more than 4,000 other academic articles.