The real fear on humanoid killer robots and slaughter-bots isn’t the killing of people literally but that they will kill millions of jobs. However, instead of killing – and this is throughout the history of capitalism – almost all machines ever used were introduced for one single reason: to crank up profits. 

This may even date back to Thomas Newcomen’s steam pump of 1712 that was used to extract water from a mine in order to increase productivity and ultimately, corporate profits.

Unsurprisingly, ever since the usage of machines for profit purposes, workers have also feared job losses and the rise of mass unemployment. While workers have indeed lost jobs, mass unemployment never eventuated in the wake of technical changes. Until today, there are plenty of nightmarish predictions. One recent prediction said that 47% of jobs are at risk of automation.

Yet, advanced robotic automation systems and their corporate application for profits still disrupt workplaces. In many cases, robots and AI convert the way work is carried out. Both also lead to transformations of conventional business models with, for example, online platform corporations and the gig economy. 

Meanwhile, they are also redefining the roles of management with the rise of algorithmic management and adjacent pathologies such as, turbo-charging technostress, panoptical surveillance via wearables, and despotic flexibility.

Since a few years now, what we believe to be “artificial intelligence” (AI) has played a decisive role in the emergence of new techno-systems. 

AI also supports ever new forms of interfaces between human beings and robots. This has been demonstrated through what is known as “collaborative robotic applications” (Cobots).

Under corporate management, this so-called “collaborative” application often means “as directed by management”. However, robotics and AI advances a “closer worker-robot interface”. 

Such a new machine-human interaction has never happened under what corporate apparatchiks sell as a “shared” workspace. Instead, it comes under the corporate dictate of management-enhanced profit maximisation.

As ever more sophisticated robots become increasingly multifaceted and become more customary in the corporate work environment, understanding how workers, AI, and robots intermingle becomes important. Necessarily, this has consequences for management, workers, and trade unions alike. 

This is particularly so if AI and robots are successfully “integrated” (read: forced onto workers) in the corporate workplace. From a human perspective, the use of robots and AI would mean ergonomics. 

But from a management perspective, this might well mean, the emergence of both AI-driven workers and robot-driven workers. It makes the human simply as an appendage to the robot and AI machine.

These techno-changes are brought about by the range of automation that can be categorised into six basic levels. It ranges from no-AI/robots to the most advanced AI and robotic system. 

Almost all of these six levels require proactive trade union engagement to safeguard a positive impact on workers and work organisations. In short, the six levels of automation are:

1. No Auto: standard management prevails – no automation, no AI, and no robots.
2. Assistant Auto: automation is used to support management and managerial decision-making.
3. Partial Auto: parts of work is done by using automation, real workers remain decision-makers.
4. Conditional Auto: most decisions are handed over to automated systems likes algorithms and AI.
5. High Auto: most management functions (performance, etc.) and work is handed over to automation.
6. Total Auto: automation defines work, management, and workers. It has total control – no human involvement.

Unlike more conventional robots that traditionally are placed inside a metal cage or put at a secure distance from workers as used in the manufacturing of cars; advanced robots are furnished with sensors and perhaps they might even have or will have “superior” functionalities – the singularity. 

Virtually all this warrant greater safety standards when robots/AI functions with a human worker. 

All things considered, these new robots enable a much closer human-to-robot (read: worker leads) – or robot-to-human (read: machine leads) – interaction and collaboration. Inside the corporate environment, these are characterised by managerial goals (read: corporate profits) and tasks are often rather synchronised and automated that benefit a business. 

It is precisely because of such corporate benefits that new forms of “machine-to-worker” interactions are arising from the use of increasingly more sophisticated robotic, algorithmic, and AI systems. 

With that, newly created and “embedded” AI and robotic abilities, new policy, and regulatory regimes are required. One idea that is associated with this is centricity. 

The concept of “human centricity” – when applied to  the field of robotics – becomes more relevant than ever before. 

The history of machinery in companies and corporations shows that such safeguarding of the “human-robot/AI” interaction does not happen automatically – nor does it happen as a management initiative.

In the context of the introduction of advanced robotics by management and the use of AI for corporate purposes, it demands that robotic and AI systems are designed and deployed in a manner that respect human values and the fundamental rights at work. 

In other words, trade unions will have to take steps to address transparency, liability, and accountability issues arising from the use of AI and robots.

Workplace safety remains an important concern for trade unions in the human-robot/AI interaction.  Hence, an updated safety requirements of machinery in the context of AI and robotics is needed. 

Such regulation – at the workplace level, the industry, and national level – needs to acknowledge that there are new safety risks that can lead to physical damage. 

Yet, there is also the risk of psychological stress. This creates what is known as “technostress”. It is even more prevalent in the case of algorithmic exploitation. 

Technostress can also be caused by robot/AI-to-human interactions but can be turbo-charged by management issuing unrealistic work tasks and skills requirements. This is often made worse when management provides no or insufficient employee training. 

For some time, trade unions have recognised the pathological impact of technological advancements on labour and the declining level of training on skills required to operate AI systems and robots. 

This is where management’s unwillingness to train workers meets the enhanced training needs associated with robots and AI.

Simultaneously, industrial and service robots are becoming more established. They are mostly established in large enterprises but not in small and medium companies. In 2022, roughly one in five large corporations in the EU used industrial robots. 

These machines were mostly used for welding, laser cutting, and so one. Meanwhile, only one in ten corporations use service robots. These tend to be used for the surveillance of workers and for transportation, and so on. 

Almost self-evidently, the take-up rate of small and medium-sized enterprises is markedly inferior compared to corporations. For one, this is because of the rather substantial investment that is demanded for the implementation of robotic technologies. 

The second issue is the “economies of scale” required to fully leverage the associated corporate gains (read: profits). In this game, corporate “size matters”. 

Once robots and AI-technologies appear inside profit-making corporations, a newly created human-robot interaction comes with it. And this changes workplaces in roughly three ways:

1. Risks: 

There are risks associated with human-robot collaborations – specifically in an environment dedicated to profit-making. One of the key dangers is that a focus on physical safety overlooks the psycho-social repercussions of AI, algorithmic management, and robots. As a consequence, involving trade unions and workers in the design and deployment of robotic and AI technologies help to reduce technostress. 

2. Change: 

Early trade union involvement in “change management” programmes can ease this situation while simultaneously increases the willingness of workers to face the upcoming techno-change associated with robots and AI. In general, adopting to robotic and AI systems necessitates new digital, analytical, and soft skills.

3. Intensification: 

Human-robot/AI interactions are often linked to increases in work intensity, i.e. work intensification. It also cranks up the surveillance of workers. All of this is linked to an accompanying decline in morale and trust in the workplace environment. It is made worse when workers’ autonomy is reduced as work tasks are shifted to robots and AI. This has negative outcomes for workers rather than for the technology which is framed as being neutral.

Rather surprisingly and since about 2018, there was actually albeit a small downward trend in enterprises using robots in the EU. Paradoxically, at the same time however, there was also an increase in the uptake of robots. 

As the overall number of robots is actually increasing, they are found to be working in a small number of companies and corporations. In short, we see more robots in fewer companies.

This might be a reflection of the typical market concentration of capitalism. To a large degree, this is because of the extraordinary investment required to make corporate investments in robots profitable. Surprisingly to the quasi-religious believers in the free market, large corporations control the “market” for robots.

The incentives for corporations to use robots and AI are foremost “productivity” (read: profits) and competitive advantages (read: more profits). 

Yet, in some cases, there is also the drive to lower labour costs and problems in hiring the right personnel to fill job vacancies.

On the use of robots that work with a human worker, the corporate motivations are to crank up “work intensity”, reduce workers’ autonomy, and to boost the managerially-organised surveillance of workers. 

The apostles of corporate capitalism talk of “workplace surveillance” in order to focus the mind of the unsuspecting reader on “work” and “workplace” while simultaneously, taking the real culprit – management – out of the equation. In pushing the ideology of Managerialism, every little bit helps.

Beyond all this, it creates managerially induced “psychosocial risks” in workplaces. A recent report by the EU’s Eurofound noted that in the use of robots, 

human centricity is not a

primary consideration in the

design and use of the robotic systems.

Worse, even in the safety testing and piloting of AI and robotic systems, there is an often-displayed non-existence of direct worker involvement. 

Yet, in those cases where workers – not trade unions – were “involved” (read: asked) by management, the focus was on so-called “technical considerations” and not on a human-centric design. 

However, getting the workers’ and union’s perspectives on robots and AI-systems remain essential for enhancing human–robot interaction. Despite everything, management continues to ignore this.

Management’s inability or unwillingness also extends deep into the area of corporate training to assure workers’ safety and the appropriate application of robotics and AI. 

Worse, the few corporate training provisions on robots and AI that exist aren’t integrated into existing change management programmes. In other words, corporate management fails to assist workers in adapting to robots and AI systems.

Worse, management comprehensively chooses to ignore a participatory approach to technology that would nurture trust and an appreciation of “co-responsibility” between workers/union and management. 

In many cases, the decisions to use AI and robots are made in the typical hierarchical, “top-down”, chain-of-command, and despotic version of standard management.

It is done without any active consultation with or involvement of workers, trade unions and other representatives like Europe-style works councils. 

Despite wrongful managerial misconceptions, prejudice and semi-pathological hallucination of business-school-trained managers, workers and their trade unions as well as other representatives generally viewed new technologies – positively. 

Workers and trade unions are concerned about workers’ safety and support the reduction of physically and psychologically demanding work tasks. 

In the end, and contrary to early expectations that robotics and AI technologies would result in shorter working hours, recent cases found that working time saved through AI and robotic automation is generally redirected towards other work tasks. 

Finally, the outcomes of the use of AI and robots is determined by “organisational factors” (read: profits) and by management choices (read: how to maximise profits) and not technology. 

In other words, what decides on new technologies is not the supposedly “neutral technology” but instead, crypto-authoritarian managers (read: corporate apparatchiks) living inside their very own ideological orbit that wilfully excludes workers and trade unions. 

The preservation of status quo, one’s own importance, career ambitions of corporate apparatchiks, etc., far exceeds the negatives associated with not consulting workers and trade unions – even when this damages companies and corporations. Managerialism wins.

Conclusively, one might argue that the introduction and use of AI and robots into companies and corporations occurs under the conditions of capitalism. This is flanked by the ideology of a “neutral technology”. As always, capitalism needs ideology to camouflage its pathologies.

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