The chapter explores the implications of the growing integration of AI and robotics into the workforce, questioning whether it will lead to a golden age or a dystopian era. It emphasizes the transformative impact of these technologies on various industries, with robots taking over tasks from manufacturing and distribution to healthcare and caregiving. The benefits include increased productivity, efficiency, safety, flexibility, cost-savings, improved precision, and enhanced quality of life. However, concerns arise regarding potential job displacement and loss, particularly for low-skilled and low-paid workers. The passage discusses the likelihood of robots replacing up to half of all jobs in the coming decades, posing challenges for reemployment and skills adaptation. The issue of inequality is raised, highlighting that low-skilled workers may be disproportionately affected. The chapter also touches on the societal disruptions, identity crisis, and potential resistance that could emerge due to widespread automation. Various policy prescriptions are proposed to address these challenges, including investing in education, training, and reskilling, implementing a universal basic income (UBI), guaranteeing jobs, exploring job-sharing and reduced hours, and considering a tax on robot labor.

Jane Costello, Professor Emerita of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University (United States) was born in England (1939) and received her PhD in social psychology from the University of London School of Economics. She participated in two National Academy of Medicine (United States) panels on aggressive and violent behavior. She began her career as an epidemiologist and evolved into a developmental epidemiologist, incorporating methods from the developmental sciences. Her interest in aggressive behavior started with studies of children with psychiatric illnesses. She created the DSM diagnostic interview for children. She studied the role of puberty in the development of conduct disorder. She created the Great Smoky Mountains Study in the United States, which led to an opportunity to compare the development of American Indian and non-Indian participants in response to a ‘natural experiment’: the creation of a casino. It had no effect on the children of the well-off members of the American Indian community, but it had a marked positive effect on children from poor families, even into their 30s. Results point to a critical period of exposure early in the teenage years: a bio-psycho-social phenomenon, which also has considerable economic and social effects, similar to the expected effect of a ‘Universal Basic Income’ (UBI).