What If Your Boss Were a Robot?

By now you've heard that artificial intelligence is coming for your job. Maybe it was an article written by AI that told you. Or you got a clue when your sushi was, uh, hand-rolled by a robot.

Either way, it's made you nervous that AI has gone beyond factory-line automation and could, someday soon, be sitting at your desk surrounded by photos of your loved ones. But have you considered that it could become your boss? AI managers are already in place at many companies. They're handling payroll and acting as office managers. And some CEOs, including Jack Ma and Elon Musk, think they could show up in the C-suite.

This might be good news to you if you and your manager have major personality differences, or if you crave logical solutions to larger issues at work. But AI isn't exactly an objective manager. It can perpetuate bias (which is our fault), as Amazon found when it used AI to field job candidates and it took it upon itself to demote women on its list. And logic is all well and good, but there's a lot to be said for emotional intelligence.

We have a long way to go before management is an algorithm, but the first to be replaced will be in payroll and benefits, according to a study by MBA Central. The next jobs to be digitized lie in property and real estate, where AI could take on a lot of the tasks involved in managing properties, such as collecting rent and arranging for services.

Whether you're in a job that could be taken over by AI or you might report to it, it's wise to broaden your skills and increase your networking with real, live humans.