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This week Ian Leslie and Stewart Wood discuss the future of robotics. Together with Sarah O’Connor, employment correspondent at the FT, they explore how further automation might change the labour force. And whether Universal Basic Income is a useful response from politicians. Plus: Ian raves about Martha C Nussbaum’s essay “Beyond anger”.
Quotes of the week:
Stewart Wood: “The left has also come to define a job as the mark of human decency – not just the left but more generally – and the left at the moment is I think quite scared of robots, automation and the effect it’s going to have.”
Sarah O’Connor: “Last night I went and met an incredibly human-like robot, called Sophia […] she was kind of creepily human, but when you talked to her, it was like talking to someone with brain damage – she’s all over the place.”
Ian Leslie: “The reason this essay spoke to me so powerfully is that what I see when I see the way politics is discussed on social media – and Twitter has had a big part in this – is a huge amount of blaming, and finger-waving and agressive anger. And not a lot of light.”
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