AI needs to augment rather than replace humans or the workplace is doomed | Heather Stewart
“Who wouldn’t want a robot to watch over your kids?” Elon Musk asked Davos delegates last week, as he looked forward with enthusiasm to a world with “more robots than people”.Not me, thanks: children need the human connection – the love – that gives life meaning.As he works towards launching SpaceX on to the stock market, in perhaps the biggest ever such share sale, the world’s richest man has every incentive to talk big.Yet as Musk waxed eccentrically about this robotic utopia, it was a reminder that major decisions about the direction of technological progress are being taken by a small number of very powerful men – and they are mainly men.In the cosy onstage chat, the World Economic Forum’s interim co-chair, Larry Fink, failed to ask Musk about whichever tweak of internal plumbing allowed his Grok chatbot to produce and broadcast what a New York Times investigation estimated was 1.
8m sexualised images of women in just nine days,The Meta boss, Mark Zuckerberg, wasn’t in the Swiss mountains, perhaps because he didn’t fancy facing questions about the $70bn he has fruitlessly poured into the metaverse, his plan for us all to hang out in a virtual world with imaginary mates,Even if he had put in an appearance, it seems unlikely he would have been pressed on the next big thing: Meta’s smart glasses, which are already, entirely predictably, being used to film women covertly,The International Monetary Fund’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, told Davos delegates that the failure to regulate tech was one of her greatest concerns, saying: “Wake up: AI is for real, and it is transforming our world faster than we are getting ahead of it,”Rather than childcare robots, though, the way most people are likely to encounter AI in the near term, is in the labour market, where Georgieva warned of a coming “tsunami” as jobs are transformed or eliminated.
The IMF is calling on governments to invest in education and reskilling to prepare populations for the changing jobs market; but also to implement tough competition policy, so the benefits of innovation do not end up concentrated in too few hands; and strong welfare safety nets,In a blogpost published just ahead of Davos, Georgieva warned: “The stakes go beyond economics,Work brings dignity and purpose to people’s lives,That’s what makes the AI transformation so consequential,”Business surveys suggest that outside the tech sector, leaders are enthusiastic about the potential of AI, but are not yet feeling the benefits.
A PWC poll of UK chief executives, published to coincide with the start of the WEF, for example, showed that 81% were making AI their top investment priority but only 30% had seen any cost reductions as a result.That means in the months ahead, there will be intense pressure to find savings, with the focus likely to be on the wage bill.Chairing a WEF session on “jobless growth”, Erik Brynjolfsson, director of Stanford’s digital economy lab, pointed to recent work he and colleagues did, suggesting workers in the US aged 22-25 are already experiencing AI-related job losses, especially in sectors where AI “automates rather than augments labour”.Brynjolfsson believes that this dichotomy is a crucial one, which gets to the heart of why Musk’s robot dreams have a dystopian edge.Four years ago Brynjolfsson wrote a paper called The Turing Trap.
He argued that the Turing test, which posited that the ultimate accolade for a technology was to replicate human intelligence by seeming human, was the wrong goal,Instead, he argues, “as machines become better substitutes for human labour, workers lose economic and political bargaining power and become increasingly dependent on those who control the technology,In contrast, when AI is focused on augmenting humans rather than mimicking them, then humans retain the power to insist on a share of the value created,”Brynjolfsson urges policymakers to use tax incentives and regulation to nudge companies towards developing technologies that enhance humans’ abilities – putting powerful tools in their hands – rather than replacing them completely,That was broadly the picture presented by the Microsoft chief executive, Satya Nadella, in an upbeat session about the future of AI, in which he talked up the benefits for the global south, describing a world in which doctors are freed up by tech to spend more time with patients, for example.
Nevertheless, he warned that the technology risked losing its “social permission” if it could not be shown to be making people’s lives better, rather than just enriching a small number of powerful tech firms.“We, as a global community, have to get to the point where we’re using this to do something useful that changes the outcomes of people and communities and countries and industries, right? Otherwise I don’t think this makes much sense,” he mused.Certainly, “social permission” for AI to swallow up energy, water and capital may be hard to come by, if the way many people encounter it – aside from in a sea of misogynistic online slop – is as the reason for their career going off the rails.And that’s why trades unionists are rightly calling for an urgent conversation about how the benefits of increased productivity, if indeed they materialise, can be shared with society, not hoarded by the tech bros.As Liz Shuler, president of the US union federation the AFL-CIO put it, “if we can all agree that this is to make our jobs better and safer, easier, more productive, then we’re all in.
But if you’re looking to just de-skill, dehumanise, replace workers, put people out on the street with no path forward, then absolutely you’re going to have a revolution,”
US small businesses are doing fine. Don’t believe me? Look at the numbers
Regardless of all the challenges they face, small businesses have been doing pretty well in this country across the board. Don’t believe me? Take a look at some of the latest numbers.For more than 50 years, the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) has published a monthly report of small-business economic trends, based on a random sample of the organization’s approximately 300,000 member firms. This survey is one of the longest and most consistent of any I follow, using the same questionnaire since 1973. So where do things stand?Last year ended with a second consecutive monthly uptick in small-business optimism, with small-business owners anticipating that economic conditions would remain generally favorable going into 2026
More than a quarter of Britons say they fear losing jobs to AI in next five years
More than a quarter (27%) of UK workers are worried their jobs could disappear in the next five years as a result of AI, according to a survey of thousands of employees.Two-thirds (66%) of UK employers reported having invested in AI in the past 12 months, according to the international recruitment company Randstad’s annual review of the world of work, while more than half (56%) of workers said more companies were encouraging the use of AI tools in the workplace.This was leading to “mismatched AI expectations” between the views of employees and their employers over the impact of AI on jobs, according to Randstad’s poll of 27,000 workers and 1,225 organisations across 35 countries. Just under half (45%) of UK office workers surveyed believed AI would benefit companies more than employees.Younger workers, particularly those belonging to gen Z – born between 1997 and 2012 – were the most concerned about the impact of AI and their ability to adapt, while baby boomers – born in the postwar years between 1946 and 1964 and nearing the end of their careers – showed greater self-assurance
Sam Altman’s make-or-break year: can the OpenAI CEO cash in his bet on the future?
Sam Altman has claimed over the years that the advancement of AI could solve climate change, cure cancer, create a benevolent superintelligence beyond human comprehension, provide a tutor for every student, take over nearly half of the tasks in the economy and create what he calls “universal extreme wealth”.In order to bring about his utopian future, Altman is demanding enormous resources from the present. As CEO of OpenAI, the world’s most valuable privately owned company, he has in recent months announced plans for $1tn of investment into datacenters and struck multibillion-dollar deals with several chipmakers. If completed, the datacenters are expected to use more power than entire European nations. OpenAI is pushing an aggressive expansion – encroaching on industries like e-commerce, healthcare and entertainment – while increasingly integrating its products into government, universities, and the US military and making a play to turn ChatGPT into the new default homepage for millions
AI needs to augment rather than replace humans or the workplace is doomed | Heather Stewart
“Who wouldn’t want a robot to watch over your kids?” Elon Musk asked Davos delegates last week, as he looked forward with enthusiasm to a world with “more robots than people”.Not me, thanks: children need the human connection – the love – that gives life meaning.As he works towards launching SpaceX on to the stock market, in perhaps the biggest ever such share sale, the world’s richest man has every incentive to talk big.Yet as Musk waxed eccentrically about this robotic utopia, it was a reminder that major decisions about the direction of technological progress are being taken by a small number of very powerful men – and they are mainly men.In the cosy onstage chat, the World Economic Forum’s interim co-chair, Larry Fink, failed to ask Musk about whichever tweak of internal plumbing allowed his Grok chatbot to produce and broadcast what a New York Times investigation estimated was 1
Iva Jovic walking in Venus Williams’ footsteps with Melbourne quarter-final date
Iva Jovic became the youngest American woman to reach the quarter-finals of the Australian Open since Venus Williams in 1998, by dismantling the Kazakhstani veteran Yulia Putintseva 6-0, 6-1 on Sunday.At 18 years old, Jovic arrived in Melbourne as the youngest player inside the top 100 and the 27th seed has dominated all opposition, rolling through her four matches without dropping a set. Jovic’s third-round win against the No 7 seed Jasmine Paolini was the first top 20 win of her career. Still, Jovic rejected the notion that she is swinging freely with nothing to lose.“I don’t really feel like there is a lot of house money or underdog mentality that I’m feeling, because I don’t feel like I have been playing anything outside of my comfort zone or outside of my normal level,” Jovic said
Home hope De Minaur destroys Bublik at Australian Open to set up Alcaraz showdown
Fuelled by revenge, dismissing doubters and upturning narratives, Alex de Minaur is within reach of somewhere he has never been. The home hope blitzed his bogeyman Alexander Bublik in just 92 minutes on Sunday night to book a place in his seventh grand slam quarter-final, and a tantalising showdown with the top seed Carlos Alcaraz.Sunday’s match finished in a blink, 6-4, 6-1, 6-1, before the sun went down over a surprisingly chilly Rod Laver Arena that left the Kazakhstani cussing to his coach about the conditions.De Minaur said he “wanted my revenge” against an opponent who had come back to beat him twice in 2025 and who is already a tournament winner in 2026. “I was very pleased with getting over the line and not getting into trouble,” the No 6 seed said
My cultural awakening: A Queen song helped me break free from communist Cuba
From Saipan to Take That: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead
Tell us your UK town of culture nomination
R&B star Jill Scott: ‘I like mystery – I love Sade but I don’t know what she had for breakfast’
Letter: Colin Ford obituary
Museums must reach all parts of UK, says Nandy as £1.5bn of arts funding announced