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GENERAL ENGLISH · GENERAL ISSUES · UPPER-INTERMEDIATE (B2-C1)

THE FUTURE
OF WORK

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1 Warm up
In groups, discuss the questions below.

1. What do you think will happen in the next decades at work?

2. Do you think artificial intelligence can help us be more productive at work?

3. Should we be worried about our job security?

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THE FUTURE OF WORK

2 Focus on vocabulary

Complete the definitions with the words from below.

Group 1:

believe change fast hands over and over plan

1. revolution (n) - a big that affects a lot of people

2. unimaginable (adj.) - something hard to

3. itinerary (n) - the of a route or a schedule

4. repetitive (adj.) - doing the same thing again

5. manual (adj.) - involves working with your

6. productivity (n) - how work gets done

Group 2:

causes development rate spreading understanding

1. disruption (n) - something that a change in the way things are

normally done

2. diagnosis (n) - the cause of a problem or an illness

3. exponentially (adv.) - the way in which something increases more and more at a faster

4. dissemination (n) - the act of something widely

5. advancement (n) - an improvement or of something

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3 Reading comprehension

Part A: Read the text below about the future of work. Six sentences have been removed. Put the
sentences back into the text in the correct order. There is one sentence that you do not use.

A) In the past, new machines replaced manual labour in land, factories, resulting in mass job losses.

B) Something completely unimaginable for us but already a reality for AI.

C) In the 20th century, workers could spend their entire lives doing the same job.

D) In this way, by assisting us with repetitive and routine tasks, AI increases our productivity by working
for us so we can focus on the human element of things.

E) Reports are now estimating that a quarter of all current jobs could be done by AI.

F) As we now know, this prediction is already a reality.

G) So far, this prediction has not been entirely correct, but some argue that this is about to change.

The AI Revolution
A new era of work and innovation

I. The Industrial Revolution completely changed the way societies were organised, revolutionising every aspect,
from the way we worked and where we lived to what we consumed. Along with it came the idea that one day,
machines could replace us humans, and all work would become automated. This belief has continued throughout
time. Herbert Simon, a political scientist and Nobel laureate, had predicted that by 1985, machines would be
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capable of doing any work humans could do. We are now approaching another
revolution, one that might finally prove this to be true: the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution.

II. For the past couple of years, Large Language Models (LLMs) have become increasingly popular. They work by
using machine learning technology, which processes large amounts of data in very little time, detecting patterns
and structures to create new content ranging from a simple work email to images, videos and even music. Imagine
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being able to learn more than 3,000 years’ worth of chess knowledge in less than a day.

III. So far, most people use AI in their day-to-day lives to simplify basic tasks, such as planning itineraries, writing and
improving emails, and summarising content. In other fields, due to its accuracy and speed, AI is already being used
to diagnose illnesses and even detect tumours, analysing thousands of scans in a fraction of the time it would take
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humans. These include, for example, tasks that require emotional intelligence,
such as communicating these diagnoses.

IV. However, it is also easy to see why some people might fear what is to come. Revolutions cause disruption.
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Now, we are already seeing AI replacing humans in customer service or creating very
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realistic pictures that would previously employ highly skilled artists and marketing teams.
With this new disruption, some go as far as predicting the end of human employment or even our very existence.
Will we work for AI and not the other way around? What if they become much smarter than us? Will they take
over control of all the systems we have built?

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V. For now, we can take comfort in the lessons from the past and present. We have always been worried about
what is to come, and yet, things have already changed. Technology has already advanced exponentially within
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our lifetimes. In this century, people have many careers within their working
years, always developing different skills. The very same generation of workers employed today has lived through
the rise of automation in factories and the mass dissemination of office computers, and the internet. In the same
way that these advancements disrupted the workforce, they have also created the need for new types of jobs, so
it’s up to us to do what we have always done best: adapt.

Sources: BBC, The Guardian, TED

Part B: Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage
for each answer.

1. Artificial intelligence is already present in many of our lives.

2. of what might happen in the future are often wrong.

3. The speed at which artificial intelligence data makes it more knowledgeable

than any human being.

4. The rise of artificial intelligence in the workplace could mean that a

workers might lose their jobs.

5. AI technology will hardly affect labour.

6. It takes humans years of studying and experience to become skilled

in their work.

7. Some people fear that AI can control over other online systems
we rely on.

8. For now, we can take in the fact that chatbots still make many
mistakes.

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4 Focus on vocabulary

What do you think the underlined words mean? Match them to their definitions below.

1. They are going to fully automate the company soon, so there will be fewer jobs.

2. The robot can mimic a lot of movements made by humans.

3. The new restaurant across the road will threaten our business, as they have a famous chef.

4. The machine can outperform a lot of workers at very simple tasks.

5. The website uses an algorithm to work out what TV shows you might be interested in.

6. The airline couldn’t match the prices of its competitors, so it went out of business.

7. Writing copy for advertising campaigns can be a difficult task.

8. The insurance company had to assess the damage caused by the fire.

a. copy how something moves and acts

b. change a factory, office or process so it works by the use of machines

c. text that is written to help with the sale of a product or service

d. a set of rules used by a computer to solve problems

e. do a job or activity better than others

f. calculate the cost, value or rate of something

g. be likely to cause damage to something or someone

h. be as good as someone or something

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5 Listening comprehension
Back in 2016, business CEO expert Anthony Goldbloom talked about how machine learning might
affect our jobs in the future. Listen to his talk and choose the correct answer for each question below.

1. How many jobs have a high risk of being automated in the future?

a. one in every two b. one in every three c. one in every four

2. When did machine learning first start to be used in industry?

a. the early ‘80s

b. the early ‘90s

c. early in the 21st century (‘00s)

3. What doesn’t the speaker say we can use machine learning for now?

a. grading high-school essays

b. writing novels

c. diagnosing eye diseases

4. How many essays might a teacher read in a 40-year career?

a. 1,000 b. 10,000 c. 50,000

5. What can humans do better than machines?

a. routine tasks

b. process large volumes of data

c. tacklenovel situations

6. What was the man who invented the microwave working on during WWII?

a. radar b. breaking code c. how to reduce radiation

7. Which professionals will find it more difficult to get jobs in the future because of machine learning?

a. teachers b. lawyers c. business strategists

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6 Focus on vocabulary: collocations

Match the adjectives on the left to the nouns on the right to make collocations from the talk.

1. complex a. strategy

2. large b. radiation

3. novel c. risk

4. electromagnetic d. situations

5. a high e. volume

6. business f. tasks

7 Speaking practice

In pairs, write and role-play a board meeting where two directors have opposite views on AI in the
workplace: one wants to use AI to cut costs, and the other defends the value of human work.

8 Talking point

Discuss any of the following questions in pairs or small groups.

1. Was Anthony Goldbloom correct about the future of work? What has he got right/wrong so far?

2. Do you think that a machine will be able to do your job in the future?

3. Which jobs do you think machines will never be able to do?

4. What do you think we can do to ‘stay ahead’ of the machines?

5. Have you lived through any other revolution in the workplace?

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9 Optional extensions

Part A: Listen to the teacher’s instructions.

Part B: Complete the extract from the talk with one word in each gap. Then, listen to it again and
check.

1
Machine learning started making its way industry in the early ’90s.
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It started with relatively simple tasks. It started things like assessing
credit risk from loan applications, sorting the mail by reading handwritten characters from zip codes.
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the past few years, we have made dramatic breakthroughs. Machine learning
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is now capable of far, far more complex tasks. In 2012, Kaggle challenged
community to build an algorithm that could grade high-school essays. The winning algorithms were
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able to match the grades given human teachers. Last year, we issued an
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even difficult challenge. Can you take images of the eye and diagnose an
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eye disease called diabetic retinopathy? Again, the winning algorithms were
to match the diagnoses given by human ophthalmologists.

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