Unmasking the Machine

When a South Korean call centre decided to bring robots into the workplace, they asked Dr Sara Kim to study their employees’ response. The firm had told workers they would not be replaced, but it wanted to better understand their insecurities and perceptions of these...

Keeping Humans in the Loop

The promise of robotics in healthcare is often equated with the development of self-driving cars. The latter technology has accelerated and these cars are now being tested on roads, although not without challenges. Could we one day have autonomous medical droids...

Robots Do Us Better

Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) are changing in rapid and fundamental ways. Think back to AlphaGo, which was the first algorithmic program to defeat a human player of Go. That was barely six years ago, yet to Professor Xi Ning, Chair Professor of Robotics...

Short-Term Pain, Long-Term Gain

Professor Yuk-fai Fong is under no illusions about the challenges that automation presents to workers around the world. Robots, automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are threatening jobs – indeed, in 2019 Oxford Economics predicted up to 20 million manufacturing...

Hollywood’s Cosy Ties with the US Military

After the World Trade Centre in New York was attacked in 2001, the 9/11 Commission concluded that American security forces had fallen short due to a ‘failure of imagination’. It is a failure that the military is trying to ensure will not happen again. From...