THIS IS THE QUESTION TWO BUSINESSMEN WERE DISCUSSING WHILE SITTING IN AN AIRPORT LOUNGE.

I was sitting next to them and couldn’t help being intrigued by their thoughts.

I won’t bore you with their thinking here as they largely focused their conversation on which of the two of them was most at risk in their role being taken over by Artificial Intelligence or Robots (one was an accountant, the other a national strategic planner).

They both each argued the other was most at risk.

My view is they are equally at risk.

The topic of artificial intelligence and robots is very prevalent for organisations at the moment.

I hear it spoken about regularly by keynote speakers at conferences, written about by futurists and business analyst thought leaders, and debated in …well, airport lounges, cafeterias and boardrooms.

THERE ARE MANY WAYS OF APPROACHING THIS TOPIC.

You could view robots and AI from a risk perspective as the two gentlemen in the lounge did.

Or you could view it from other perspectives such as ethics, innovation, disruption, future proofing, or as is sometimes the case, the beginning of Armageddon.

My perspective is anthropological, meaning mostly that I look at it from a cultural perspective.