“The ascent of corporations is one of the great, if unheralded, paradoxes of the modern West. Corporations are regarded as the apogee of modern capitalism and have found their most fertile soil within liberal, democratic, capitalist polities, where their legal protections are most numerous. Yet they are of premodern provenance and themselves violate all the basic principles of liberalism, democracy, and free-market capitalism. More than any other phenomenon, the rise of corporations challenges the adequacy of our liberal individualist frames and underscores the urgency of complicating them.” p.156

(p.414) It is possible that artificial general intelligence—AI that out-performs humans in all ways—will arrive in several decades and the resulting employment disruptions will dwarf the disruptions described in this paper. But between today and 2040, the AI that already exists will disrupt the nation’s occupational structure. The question is whether these disruptions will seriously destabilize the country’s political and social structure. Part of the answer involves the speed of technical disruptions. The evidence in this article is mixed, but on balance there appears to be some time to develop anticipatory policies to assist people who will lose jobs and other...

(p.2) AI has the ability to affect the workforce in many ways, both as a standalone technology or when coupled with other technologies (robotics, machine learning, blockchain, etc.). This Foresight Brief therefore argues that a governance framework needs to be developed, and one preferably based on regulation rather than ethical guidelines, codes of conduct or standards. Practically speaking, AI systems can impact workers in many different ways: trackers for Uber drivers, Deliveroo riders and lorry drivers; nurses connected with apps and tablets; technicians collaborating with robots in a production line; software deciding who should be promoted next, predicting outcomes and scheduling...

(p.10) As surveillance technologies can lead to violations of human dignity and workers’ rights, monitoring and tracking policies need to be clearly justified and discussed on a case-by-case basis. This must cover such aspects as what is possible, what the limits are, and where and how the data collected from the workforce comes from (for instance, private email, social media posts or offline activity). Moreover, the right to disconnect or the right to be unavailable should be respected across the board, as is already the case in some EU countries such as France.

(p.12) With the development of AI, companies are looking after their own interests by upskilling or reskilling their employees. For workers, acquiring technical skills, although necessary, is not enough. They need to become ‘AI literate’, which is understood as being able to critically understand AI’s role and its impact on their work. This means learning to work alongside AI and to anticipate how AI will transform their career and role at work. Passively using AI systems or tools does not benefit the workers themselves; a certain distance needs to be established for them to see AI’s overall impact and influence.

(p.43) Although Sartre warned that Comte’s ‘cult of humanity’ could itself evolve into a type of fascism (a ‘facile humanism’ turned in on itself), the implication of Comtean positivism is that human futurity is contingent on technological progress. For Comte there is no reason to think beyond this: technology is conceived as a means for the fulfilment of new human needs – for overcoming metaphysics without relinquishing a humanist faith in progress. For Heidegger, on the other hand, there is a refusal to accept the facticity of humanism and the apparent irreversibility of the human condition. His concern lies with the...