We Are Not Machines: The Fight for the Future of Work [9781567928365]

Overview

“Original and enlightening....the kind of writing that AI will never replace.”—The Times

Automation was promised to free us from drudgery. Instead, it is turning creative and essential work into dehumanizing labor.

In this deeply reported investigation, award-winning Financial Times journalist Sarah O’Connor exposes how AI and robotics are reshaping the modern workplace. Traveling from Amazon warehouses and long-haul trucking routes to Orwellian corporate offices using AI hiring algorithms, O’Connor documents a disturbing reality: workers aren't being liberated by machines—they are being paced, monitored, and crunched by them.

As O’Connor asks: “We think we’re robotizing our work, but what if we’re actually robotizing ourselves?”

Drawing lines of descent from nineteenth-century English cotton mills to twenty-first-century Swedish mines, O’Connor shows that our struggle against algorithmic management is not new. Inspiring and urgent, this book charts a vital path forward to reclaim work that respects human limits and honors the capacity of the human mind.