Digitalisation, ai and Robotics in the New Workplace

Digitalisation, AI and Robotics in the New Workplace

Martin Upchurch

Middlesex University, London, UK

Range of Innovation

• Digitalisation/Computerisation
• Robotics/Artificial Intelligence
• 3-D printing
• Self-tracking/Quantified Self
• Driverless vehicles
• algorithms

Techno-optimism? Disruptive technology? or Technological Determinism?

• Digital labour, free labour
• Immaterial Labour
• Technological and/or economic singularity
• Industry 4/Second Machine Age
• Gig economy
• Platform/app. economy
• Shared economy, Gift Economy
• Post capitalism, ‘full automation’.

Questions??

• Is second wave automation (2000+) different in its effects on work from first wave (late 1960s/1970s)?
• Is digital labour (‘free’, ‘shared’, ‘immaterial’, ‘cultural’) different from manual, mental, emotional, aesthetic labour?
• Are we moving closer to technological singularity?
• Is a robot after your job?

Technology and Capitalism

• Neo-Classical Growth Theory C T C incremental advances of technology, products of entrepreneurial spirit and/or genius inventors, with some ‘great leaps forward’ (spinning jenny, steam engine, urban sanitation, jet engine, telegraph, telephone).
• Implicit assumption that technology is ‘neutral’ in its effects on society and is a ‘product of necessity’. An ‘autonomous’ agent (Ellul, 1964) with ‘the power to overtake us’ (Heidegger, 1977). Technological determinism?

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• Socio-technical perspective (economic, social, technical, political interaction)
• Marxist perspective (management tool, ‘dead’ capital, crisis tendency)

Robots, AI and Singularity

• Interlinkage
• Technical advances

“As robots become more affordable and easier to program, a greater number of small manufacturers will be able to deploy them and integrate them more deeply into industrial supply chains. Advances in vision sensors, gripping systems, and information technology, meanwhile, are making robots smarter, more highly networked, and immensely more useful for a wider range of applications.”