What Will Happen When Robots Take Our Jobs?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 18 August 2015
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Robots are coming for your job. Blue-collar jobs in industries like manufacturing have been disappearing for years but now white-collar work is under threat too. Machines are already taking roles that used to be done by journalists, lawyers and even anaesthetists. One recent study calculated that 47% of total employment in the US is at risk of automation in the next 20 years.
So what will happen to all the human beings who did those jobs? Will we invent enough new jobs to keep them occupied? If not, how will they fill their time? And how will they earn money? The Inquiry – still made by humans, for now, – brings you answers.
(Photo: A robot stands with workers at a Japanese employee supply company. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | BBC World Service, this is Helena Merriman with the inquiry. |
| 0:04.6 | This week, what will happen when robots take our jobs? |
| 0:09.5 | At an American hospital in Ohio, an anesthetist is about to sedate a patient. |
| 0:17.0 | It's one of the most delicate arts of medicine involving years of training. |
| 0:22.0 | Get it wrong, and the patient could feel great pain or even die. |
| 0:27.0 | But this anesthetist is not suffering from pre-op nerves. |
| 0:31.0 | That's because it's a machine. |
| 0:36.0 | Four hospitals in the US are now using machines instead of anesthetists to sedate patients for simple procedures. |
| 0:44.4 | It costs around $200, a fraction of what a human could be paid. |
| 0:49.8 | Good news for hospital administrators. |
| 0:52.2 | Bad news for the highly trained anesthetist. |
| 0:55.0 | In fact, it's bad news for anyone who thought that robots only threatened blue-collar |
| 1:00.0 | routine-based jobs. |
| 1:02.0 | Machines have now written news stories, performed legal discovery work, diagnosed |
| 1:07.1 | lung cancer, landed planes, traded on Wall Street, composed music, and performed many biopsies. |
| 1:14.9 | A report from two leading economists found that in the next 20 years, almost half of the jobs |
| 1:20.2 | in the US are at risk of being automated. It's clear robots are already |
| 1:26.0 | taking some of our jobs and more and more are under threat. What's less clear is |
| 1:31.6 | what happens next? |
| 1:33.0 | And that's what this week's inquiry is all about. |
| 1:36.0 | What will happen when robots take our jobs? |
| 1:40.0 | Part one. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.