'The Future of Work Improves Only When We Fight' [People and Digital Forum]

The narrative surrounding artificial intelligence often portrays it as an unstoppable force, a 'tsunami' that passively sweeps away existing structures. However, Sarah O'Connor, an assistant editor at the Financial Times specializing in labor and technology, challenges this deterministic view. At the 5th Hankyoreh People and Digital Forum, she asserted that 'we are not machines' and that the future of work is not something to merely predict but something to actively shape through struggle. 'The future of work can be better than it is now. But it won't be without a fight,' O'Connor declared.

O'Connor urged a shift from asking 'Can we?' or 'Will we?' regarding technological advancements to asking 'What should we do?' This ethical and normative question, she believes, is more critical than quantitative predictions about job automation. Instead of focusing on the percentage of jobs potentially exposed to automation, O'Connor advocates for attention to the qualitative changes in labor. She shared her experience interviewing translators, noting how AI has reduced them to post-editing machine translations, a role that diminishes their expertise and impacts the quality of content for the general public.

“

The future of work can be better than it is now. But it won't be without a fight.

However, O'Connor also presented a contrasting case from a Swedish mine where miners successfully negotiated with management over a real-time location tracking system. Initially proposed by management, the system threatened worker privacy. Through strong opposition, the miners secured a compromise involving anonymized markers, ultimately becoming more receptive to other automation technologies. This example underscores O'Connor's central argument: the outcome of technological implementation is heavily influenced by human agency.

She identified three key factors determining the impact of technology: who has a seat at the negotiation table when tools are designed and introduced (voice), who decides how digital tools are applied in daily work (agency), and who sets the pace, workers, managers, customers, or technology itself (pace). O'Connor concluded by reiterating that the future of work can be more considerate of human physical and mental well-being and more fulfilling for the human spirit, but this requires active engagement and a willingness to fight for better conditions.

“

The story's protagonist is not technology, but us.