"Original and enlightening....the kind of writing that AI will never replace."--The Times

Automation was promised to free us from drudgery. Instead, it is turning creative and essential work into dehumanizing labor.

In this deeply reported investigation, award-winning Financial Times journalist Sarah O'Connor exposes how AI and robotics are reshaping the modern workplace. Traveling from Amazon warehouses and long-haul trucking routes to Orwellian corporate offices using AI hiring algorithms, O'Connor documents a disturbing reality: workers aren't being liberated by machines--they are being paced, monitored, and crunched by them.

As O'Connor asks: "We think we're robotizing our work, but what if we're actually robotizing ourselves?"

Drawing lines of descent from nineteenth-century English cotton mills to twenty-first-century Swedish mines, O'Connor shows that our struggle against algorithmic management is not new. Inspiring and urgent, this book charts a vital path forward to reclaim work that respects human limits and honors the capacity of the human mind.