Since Oxford’s Carl Frey published their paper examining the risk of automation to professions across the economy in 2013, there has been no shortage of attempts to understand how the “future of work” might unfold (not least by myself). A recent study from KU Leuven analyzes the nature of these discussions over the past decade.

What they found was that while discussions tended to take a number of different stances, they nearly always viewed the future as inevitable, even as they often clashed with other commentators. Most commentators covered the future of work from one of three camps:

• technology and innovation experts

• authors and journalists

• economy and labor market experts

The study found that each of these would often take a different stance on the future of work. For instance, technologists tend to be optimistic in their outlook and believe that technology will result in a better outcome. Journalists, on the other hand, were more often pessimistic, whether in terms of people’s job prospects or the impact on the environment. Lastly, economists economic analyses tended to have portrayed technology as resulting in economic growth that will require people to learn new skills but won’t lead to widespread displacement.

Different perspectives

The researchers believe that each of these groups looks at information in a different way. It’s a concept known as “field frames”, which is when you see a complex picture but only focus on one aspect of it. This results in each of the three groups viewing the future of work in completely different ways.

This framing is reinforced by the fact that each group often has its own information and even its own vocabulary. This helps to forge a social identity that ensures each group tends to stick to the “party line”.

This isn’t necessarily a problem, except each of the groups tends to believe they see the whole picture and that their perspective is the only game in town.

Competing narratives

These different ways of looking at the future of work result in very different narratives around how the future may unfold. The researchers analyzed nearly 500 articles on the topic from the Belgian media, and seven key narratives emerged:

• Job destruction – This is one of the more pervasive, and covers articles predicting that many jobs will be lost as a result of automation.
• Augmentation – Another perspective takes a more optimistic view and argues that AI will augment humans in the workplace, rather than replace them.
• Reskilling – Which is an extension of augmentation, whereby employees will be required to update their skills to adapt to the changing nature of work.
• Dataism – This is a narrative in which authors argue that data will grow to drive every aspect of society.
• Work deintensification – This strand builds on John Maynard Keynes’ prediction from a century ago that the working week would get shorter and we’d lead a more leisure-driven life. This often goes hand in hand with advocacy of things like a universal basic income.
• The singularity – Now we get into slightly more extravagant predictions, with the optimists arguing that the merging of man and machine in a singularity is inevitable as technology becomes ever more powerful.
• Exterminism – The flip side of this is taken by those who believe this march of technology will inevitably result in our destruction, or at least to a degradation of our environment and a rise in poor quality work and economic inequality.

What is perhaps most interesting is that the three main camps identified by the researchers only really agreed that data would drive society and that the singularity was unlikely.

Dominating the debate

One might assume this is just the typical posturing that emerges around any topic, but the researchers found that those who shouted the loudest tended to dominate the debate, and therefore influence the future.

“If you say every day in the newspaper that universal basic income is impossible, the odds of people in government trying to implement it go down,” the researchers explain. “If it doesn’t happen, was your prediction accurate or did you influence the outcome?”

This can be overcome by including more voices in the discussion. For instance, the researchers note that workers and trade unions are usually absent from discussions around the future of work, as indeed are politicians and policymakers.

“The interests of multiple groups of people and multiple perspectives should be reflected in the public debate, because the public debate will partially influence what will actually happen,” the authors continue. “The words that we use today, the frames that we use today, and the numbers and figures we push in the media will influence the outcome.”

All of this can make those reading such articles unsure about how to properly prepare for a future that, for all the certainty in the articles, remains uncertain. The researchers argue that leaders might benefit from employing scenario planners so they can map out the various possibilities and assign probabilities to them.

For workers, they argue that it’s important not only to look at what is being said but who is saying it. They should also strive to add their own voice to the conversation via social movements and collective action so that they’re helping to shape the future rather than mere vessels to fortune.

“As the practical implications of our research show, the future of work does not need to be something that happens ‘to us,’” the researchers conclude. “Instead, the future can be what we make it.”