FT journalist Sarah O'Connor provides insights about how technological change and automation is impacting workers.

A tsunami of change is sweeping the economy as robots and AI threaten to take over tasks done by humans. In her new book We Are Not Machines, Financial Times journalist Sarah O’Connor investigates what is happening on the front lines of technological change. People are not losing their jobs to machines, she found, but losing something else instead: work becoming lonelier, less creative, less human. But she also found hopeful stories of jobs being made better, safer and more enjoyable – where workers haven’t rejected the new tools but have learned to control them. O’Connor, in discussion with Heather Stewart, Guardian and Sue Turner OBE, Professor in Practice in AI and Digital Technologies at the University of Bristol, explores questions of power, design, institutions and ideas in this new world.

Speakers:

Sarah O'Connor (Financial Times)

Heather Stewart (The Guardian)

Sue Turner (University of Bristol)

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Sarah O’Connor is a columnist, reporter and associate editor at the Financial Times. She writes a weekly column focused on the world of work, as well as longer features and investigations. She has won the Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain's Social Evils, the Wincott Award for financial journalism, Business Commentator of the Year at the Comment Awards, Financial/Economic story of the year at the Foreign Press Awards and Business and Finance Journalist of the year at the British Press Awards. Her new book is We Are Not Machines: The Fight for the Future of Work.

Heather Stewart is the economics editor of the Guardian. She was formerly the Guardian's political editor. She has written about AI and employment, welfare, alternative economic approaches, ‘Manchesterism’, the living wage, borrowing, among many other issues. She has chaired many events in Festival of Economics, Bristol Festival of Ideas and Festival of the Future City.

Sue Turner OBE is Professor in Practice in AI and Digital Technologies at the University of Bristol Business School. She is a globally respected authority on artificial intelligence, data governance, and ethics, recognised as one of the world’s Top 100 Women in AI Ethics. Turner works at the intersection of technology, law, and leadership, helping organisations move beyond experimentation to adopt AI with confidence, accountability, and purpose. Turner has worked previously as Regional Director of the CBI and was CEO of the Quartet Community Foundation.

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Artwork by Alys Jones Illustration.

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