Allen Lane We Are Not Machines: The Fight for the Future of Work by Sarah O'Connor | Hardcover

From award-winning Financial Times journalist Sarah O’Connor, We Are Not Machines offers a deeply reported investigation into how Artificial Intelligence is transforming our working lives in unpredictable ways. This hardcover book challenges the common worry about robots taking over tasks, suggesting the greater risk lies in humans robotizing themselves. It explores the quality of work, not just the quantity, through real-world stories.

• Investigates the impact of AI and automation on the quality of work, not just job displacement.
• Features on-the-ground reporting from various sectors, including TV subtitle translators and warehouse workers.
• Examines how work is becoming more intense, lonely, less creative, and less human in some instances.
• Highlights hopeful examples where technology is being leveraged to make work better, safer, and more enjoyable.
• Argues that the outcome of technological change is shaped by power, design, culture, and institutions, and must be actively contested.
• Inspired by historical contexts, drawing parallels from nineteenth-century English cotton mills to twenty-first century Swedish mines.

Written by Sarah O’Connor, this book moves beyond simple automation fears to explore the nuanced changes in the labor market. It reveals how we can advocate for work that respects human limits and is more worthy of human minds.

• Author: Sarah O’Connor
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Print Length: 256 pages
• ISBN-10: 0241704227
• ISBN-13: 978-0241704226
• Dimensions: 146 x 24 x 225mm
• Item Weight: 360 g
• Publication Date: June 4, 2026

Essential reading for educators, policymakers, and workers concerned with the future trajectory of employment, We Are Not Machines provides the framework for understanding and fighting for better work.