Humans need not apply

Will automation, AI and robotics mean a jobless future, or will their productivity free us to innovate and explore? Is the impact of new technologies to be feared, or a chance to rethink the structure of our working lives and ensure a fairer future for all? If routine cognitive tasks are taken over by AI, how do professions develop their future experts? - Stella Pachidi On googling 'will a robot take my job'' I find myself on a BBC webpage that invites me to discover the likelihood that my work will be automated in the next 20 years. I type in 'editor'. "It's quite unlikely, 8%" comes back. Quite reassuring - but, coming from a farming family, it's a sobering moment when I type in 'farmer': "It's fairly likely, 76%". The results may well be out of date - such is the swiftness of change in labour market predictions - but the fact that the webpage even exists says something about the focus of many of today's conversations around the future of work. Many of the discussions are driven by stark numbers. According to a scenario suggested recently by consultancy McKinsey, 75-375 million workers (3-14% of the global workforce) will need to switch occupational categories by 2030, and all workers will need to adapt "as their occupations evolve alongside increasingly capable machines".