Digital Anthropology’s Richard Skellett was a guest on TalkRadio‘s early breakfast show with James Max on 28 November.
Discussing the impacts of Labour’s proposed raising of the minimum wage, Richard pointed to a report by the Institute of Fiscal Studies that says jobs are at risk of being replaced by robots if the minimum wage continues to rise.
He said: “Amazon have built a business case about completely automating warehouses in China. What is interesting is their business case is built upon someone paid less than 80p per hour. If there is a business case for displacing human workers on 80p per hour, then that is worrying in the UK when we have people on circa £8 per hour.”
Richard also spoke about the upcoming launch of the Digital Anthropology social enterprise, saying: “Technology is fantastic, but it concerns me about the impact of tech of individuals and jobs. Do we want to have a situation where tech displaces people or do we want tech to augment people? I’m in the augment camp.”