Are we about to see the rise of robot bosses?

Imagine if your boss were a machine. For some people, this is almost a reality, says Jane Palmer. So, will we all end up working for robots and algorithms?

In 1910, a strike began at the Watertown Arsenal near Boston when a manager used a stopwatch to time a worker's performance.

"No tyrant or slave driver, even in their wildest dreams, ever tried to impose a more repugnant condition on abject slaves," said one labor leader.

The factory was introducing new scientific management practices, developed by Frederick Taylor and known as Taylorism, to boost productivity and efficiency. However, the workers resisted. They argued that Taylorism, which required factories to operate like military units with managers giving orders to powerless subordinates, treated workers as mindless drones. Fast forward to today, and a new type of hyper-efficient management might be on the horizon, but with a technological twist. In the ongoing pursuit of productivity, automation has already entered many industries. This means your next boss might not be a tyrant or even a friendly manager. Your next boss could be a machine.

The idea that robots and algorithms will take jobs is a common concern about the future. As Bill Gates mentioned earlier this year: “20 years from now, labor demand for many skill sets will be significantly lower.” Automation has already reduced the need for humans in many workplaces, from building cars in factories to handling bookings in call centers. Scientists at Birmingham University in the UK are even testing whether an autonomous security guard can perform a real job in an office setting.

However, one question rarely asked is: what would it be like to work for a machine? After all, a mix of humans and machines is a more likely scenario for future workplaces.

Bare bones

To some extent, basic machine managers are already here, especially in the online world. On Amazon's Mechanical Turk—an internet marketplace where people, known as Turkers, offer their services—much of the coordination is handled by an algorithm. The Mechanical Turk software lists available tasks, ranging from drawing a logo to transcribing audio recordings. Based on the past performance of Turkers, an algorithm ranks them higher or lower on the list of potential candidates for a job or adjusts their payment rates.

Other services, like MobileWorks, use similar software to recruit and pay workers for small tasks, such as taking a photo or checking a spreadsheet, all without human involvement. Freelancer.com, which posts jobs for people like software engineers, writers, or architects, uses software to assign more work to higher-performing freelancers.

While these algorithms are not fully autonomous...s by the standards of a human being, they do perform the bare bones tasks of an employer: task allocation, evaluation and payment for a job done well.