Toby Walsh
Man vs. Machine

Artificial intelligence is becoming an increasingly prominent – and potentially dominant – part of our working world. But how do we decide which jobs people should still do and which to entrust to machines?

Industrialization revolutionized Western society in the second half of the 18th century. And assembly-line work processes and new-fangled machines have since fundamentally changed the role of the individual.

Will human labour gradually be replaced by artificial intelligence? After all, many companies are already using robots, which are supposed to make everything more efficient, cheaper and more precise. Man makes mistakes, whereas a machine can be precisely programmed to get it right every time. Toby Walsh, a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales, says one thing’s for sure: robots will take on some of the work, but they’ll never replace us humans. We’ll have to decide for ourselves which jobs it makes sense to farm out to robots – or to keep for ourselves alone.