Research indicates working more than 48 hours a week is associated with significant declines in productivity, more mistakes and more mental health problems. Yet the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons reckons working up to 65 hours a week “is appropriate for trainees…
Eight top schools have as many Oxford and Cambridge admissions as the next 2894 UK schools combined, according to a new report by the Sutton Trust. The Trust suggests that little has changed regarding access to opportunity at Oxbridge since…
There is a line in Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death that has been haunting me for months now. It reads in part: “people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.”…
Around 40% of all law jobs are at risk of automation, according to a 2016 Deloitte report. Traditional skills expected of law graduates are increasingly going to be undertaken by new AI-driven software. Basic skills such as database research and…
When we talk about learning, we’re often talking about school or university or a workplace training seminar. But to be a lifelong learner is to understand how to learn by yourself, outside of an institution, after that stage of life…
Ping pong. Bean bags. Free lunch. I’ve spent two months researching the psychological tools companies use to get employees to work longer hours for free. This builds on my previous work on social psychological research and law including my first book: Us vs…
It is nearly time for Vivid Sydney, and I thought in light of that I’d share some of my thoughts on the current state of public talks and events in the city. For a long time there has been an underground…
There is a common argument in favour of technology: If we are divided, surely technology can help solve the problem? Surely technology can bridge the gaps between different groups in society and connect us? Connection need not be face-to-face if…
The history of law schools is a battle of ideas. Ideas over what the law is, how it should
be taught and the kinds of student a law school should produce. Frequently,
law schools have been the battleground of fierce intellectual rivalries, with
rival schools of thought battling for supremacy.
My book Essays in AI looks at the future of traditional work and the upheaval about to hit the economy from AI, automation and new technologies. Having already seen a rapidly changing workforce in the early 2000s, the future looks confusing…