We Are Not Machines

'Sarah is one of the few people who really understands how AI is changing the character of work already and what it means for all of us' David Runciman 'Original and enlightening... Not many books about the labour market make you laugh and bring tears to your eyes' Emma Duncan, The Times From award-winning Financial Times journalist Sarah O’Connor, a deeply reported investigation into how AI is transforming our working lives in unpredictable ways A tsunami of change, we are told, is sweeping the economy, as robots and AI threaten to take over tasks done by humans. But while we worry that we’re robotizing our work, what if the bigger risk is that we’re robotizing ourselves? When prize-winning Financial Times journalist Sarah O’Connor set out to investigate what was happening on the ground, she met people who weren’t necessarily losing their jobs to machines, but who felt they were losing something, nonetheless. Because the quantity of work is not the only thing at stake in times of rapid technological change. So is its quality. From TV subtitle translators reduced to editing AI output to warehouse workers surrounded by robots and graduates interviewed by machines, O’Connor found stories of work becoming more intense, more lonely, less creative, less human . But she also investigated hopeful instances of work being made better, safer and more enjoyable – stories in which people have been able to make the machines work for them, rather than the other way around. Her reporting shows that the way our tools change our work - and ourselves - is shaped by power, design, culture, institutions and ideas. As a result, the outcome is not pre-determined but must be contested by us all. Inspired by stories from nineteenth-century English cotton mills to twenty-first century Swedish mines, We Are Not Machines reveals how we can fight for work which is more respectful of our limits, and more worthy of our minds.

'Sarah is one of the few people who really understands how AI is changing the character of work already and what it means for all of us' David Runciman 'Original and enlightening... Not many books about the labour market make you laugh and bring tears to your eyes' Emma Duncan, The Times From award-winning Financial Times journalist Sarah O’Connor, a deeply reported investigation into how AI is transforming our working lives in unpredictable ways A tsunami of change, we are told, is sweeping the economy, as robots and AI threaten to take over tasks done by humans. But while we worry that we’re robotizing our work, what if the bigger risk is that we’re robotizing ourselves? When prize-winning Financial Times journalist Sarah O’Connor set out to investigate what was happening on the ground, she met people who weren’t necessarily losing their jobs to machines, but who felt they were losing something, nonetheless. Because the quantity of work is not the only thing at stake in times of rapid technological change. So is its quality. From TV subtitle translators reduced to editing AI output to warehouse workers surrounded by robots and graduates interviewed by machines, O’Connor found stories of work becoming more intense, more lonely, less creative, less human . But she also investigated hopeful instances of work being made better, safer and more enjoyable – stories in which people have been able to make the machines work for them, rather than the other way around. Her reporting shows that the way our tools change our work - and ourselves - is shaped by power, design, culture, institutions and ideas. As a result, the outcome is not pre-determined but must be contested by us all. Inspired by stories from nineteenth-century English cotton mills to twenty-first century Swedish mines, We Are Not Machines reveals how we can fight for work which is more respectful of our limits, and more worthy of our minds.

"Original and enlightening....the kind of writing that AI will never replace."-- The Times From award-winning Financial Times journalist Sarah O'Connor, a deeply reported investigation into how AI and robotics are transforming the way we work. Automation, we were told, was meant to do away with dull and dangerous tasks, freeing us to pursue more fulfilling work. But AI now threatens to turn even creative tasks into dehumanizing labor. Investigative journalist Sarah O'Connor has spent the last few years gathering stories of burned-out Amazon warehouse workers, Orwellian employee surveillance softwares, AI job interviews, translators frantically trying to keep up with machines, and truck drivers endlessly on the road. As Sarah O'Connor writes, "Automation was meant to do away with dull, dirty, dangerous tasks. It was meant to free us up for more interesting and creative work. So why was my notebook filling up with stories of good jobs turned bad, and bad jobs turned worse? These people were not being liberated by machines. Instead, they were being crunched into systems run by machines and paced by machines, in which important concepts such as fairness, intelligence, even human-ness itself, were being quietly redefined by machines. And that left me with a question. A question that prompted me to write this book. We think we're robotizing our work, but what if we're actually robotizing ourselves? " Our fear that machines will make us more robotic, O'Connor argues, is not new and has its origins in the industrial revolution, when workers fought against the expectation that they should toil like tireless machines. Inspired by campaigners from nineteenth-century English cotton mills to twenty-first century Swedish mines, O'Connor lays out a path where we can fight for work that is more respectful of our limits, and more worthy of the capacity of our minds.

"Original and enlightening....the kind of writing that AI will never replace."-- The Times From award-winning Financial Times journalist Sarah O'Connor, a deeply reported investigation into how AI and robotics are transforming the way we work. Automation, we were told, was meant to do away with dull and dangerous tasks, freeing us to pursue more fulfilling work. But AI now threatens to turn even creative tasks into dehumanizing labor. Investigative journalist Sarah O'Connor has spent the last few years gathering stories of burned-out Amazon warehouse workers, Orwellian employee surveillance softwares, AI job interviews, translators frantically trying to keep up with machines, and truck drivers endlessly on the road. As Sarah O'Connor writes, "Automation was meant to do away with dull, dirty, dangerous tasks. It was meant to free us up for more interesting and creative work. So why was my notebook filling up with stories of good jobs turned bad, and bad jobs turned worse? These people were not being liberated by machines. Instead, they were being crunched into systems run by machines and paced by machines, in which important concepts such as fairness, intelligence, even human-ness itself, were being quietly redefined by machines. And that left me with a question. A question that prompted me to write this book. We think we're robotizing our work, but what if we're actually robotizing ourselves? " Our fear that machines will make us more robotic, O'Connor argues, is not new and has its origins in the industrial revolution, when workers fought against the expectation that they should toil like tireless machines. Inspired by campaigners from nineteenth-century English cotton mills to twenty-first century Swedish mines, O'Connor lays out a path where we can fight for work that is more respectful of our limits, and more worthy of the capacity of our minds.