Hollywood’s recent battles between screenwriters and the robots threatening their jobs should have been a wake-up call for millions of European workers. Who will protect our working rights from the algorithms, which increasingly act like our bosses?
The traditional landscape of our workplaces, from factories to offices, is being dramatically transformed by the proliferation of robots, algorithms and artificial intelligence. But it is the tech giants, not workers, that seem to be reaping most of the benefits. Work tasks are increasingly fragmented or distributed geographically along the global value chain. Algorithms now monitor work activity in real time, but they bring the risk of exploitation or discrimination if unchecked. The implications challenge both our established labour norms and the pillars of our social security system.
