Mastering the Robot. The Future of Work in the Second Machine Age
To ensure that robotisation is beneficial to both the economy and workers, a robot agenda is required. The key word in this agenda is complementarity: having people working together with robots instead of robots taking over as much work as possible. That is stated in the WRR Investigation Mastering the Robot. The Future of Work in the Second Machine Age (WRR Investigation no. 31, 2015).
In this publication, technology experts, economists and other researchers consider what robotisation and digitisation mean for the future of work. Some jobs will disappear, new jobs will be created, and the nature of much of our work will change. But robotisation takes much more time and effort than many assume.
Government, researchers, employers and employees, and their representative organisations can also influence the way in which technology is developed and applied. We can master the robot by developing an inclusive agenda that stresses complementarity between humans and machines and focuses on co-creation, training, the quality of work, and new issues of inequality.