New office habitats, promoting communal discussions, will force robot headhunters to consider social skills much more

Sir, John Gapper when discussing new open space offices that are intended to intensify creative communications writes that “companies should start by recognising what their employees fear losing” and among this, is obviously “privacy”. “Tech utopias drive workers to distraction” September 14, 2017

But the need for privacy is not only based on a wish of being alone but quite often much more on the wish to avoid some. In this respect it must be expected that social skills will be much more important when robots or artificial intelligence evaluates candidates in the future, because you cannot risk having absolute bores or pain-in-the-ass employees roaming around freely.

Evaluating human social skills? Now that’s a new challenge for artificial intelligence. I wonder what Watson has to say about it? Perhaps, a test-period in which all co-workers could use a point system to evaluate candidates? Would such discriminatory procedures be politically acceptable?

Sir, do your current headhunters discriminate candidates based on their social skills?

PS. How will robot recruiters treat their human ex colleagues they left without jobs? 

@PerKurowski

The challenges of the “We have nothing to do” and of the society as a changing habitat.

Sir, you title the article on the current riots in the suburbs of Stockholm as “The challenges of the Swedish model” May 27. Although that is quite understandable perhaps a “Not even the Swedish model gets away” would have been more appropriate, since what is happening in Sweden is perhaps foremost a reflection of the growing unemployment of youth.

This is really nothing new in Sweden. In 1965 in the middle of Stockholm there were thousands of youngsters (I was not there) rioting for days and causing damages… and the basic explanation heard was that of “We have nothing to do”. 

And in this respect, given the possibilities of prolonged large unemployment, I have often argued that the well being of nations might come to depend more on the capacity of the unemployed to deal with their reality in a constructive way, that on what the employed are capable to do. 

That said there is no way to avoid the fact that whether we like it or not, current rioting in many places also closely correlate with immigration problems and the de-facto creation of immigrant ghettos which result even though no one wishes that to happen. Especially disturbing in Sweden is that during some of the car burning, some religious slogans were overheard.

A society is more than a piece of land, it is a delicate habitat. It thrives on the slow introduction of new species, but it can also fall apart if too many new species are introduced too fast and cannot adapt, without destroying too many of the previously existing ones.