Comparisons and conclusions

This chapter introduces the broad workforce issues and challenges associated with current and future developments and applications in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and machine learning technologies. They differ from other information technical systems as they can be intuitive and perform complex tasks without any coding undertaken by human or manual input to boost their performance. The Price Waterhouse Coopers Workforce of the Future Report suggests that there are three levels of AI. Industrial jobs have not disappeared through robotics; the major change is in the shift in manufacturing towards low cost labour economies from advanced economies. In emerging economies many jobs are informal, low paid and result in low productivity, and this is unlikely to change as a consequence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Developed by the Tavistock Institute for Human Relations in London in the 1940s, socio-technical systems theory initially focused on the manufacturing sector during the first and second industrial revolutions.