What will the future of work look like in 2027?

Sam is an imaginary worker of 2027 whose work environment was created based on the imaginations and projections offered by seven professionals interviewed by The Korea Times — three futurists and four business professionals.

When the media talks about the future of work, many have voiced concerns and fears about the future, painting a bleak picture of the world we will live in, surrounded by AI and robots taking away our jobs. Not many have projected a positive but feasible scenario to imagine, perhaps because fears overpowered their hopes. Consulting companies are disgorging reports on the future of work and how to prepare for it, laden with “solution spaces” for the problems which are mostly based on fears.

But interestingly, none of the professionals interviewed by The Korea Times projected a bleak outlook of the future. In fact, their responses were generally, or most entirely, positive, laden with hope and excitement. Also, despite all the speculation about technology overtaking human jobs and workers becoming helpless, they were more positive about the use of technology by people and tech going hand-in-hand with physical interaction. The future they imagined was more human-centered and humanistic than ever before.

Here are 7 groups of keywords extracted from the interviews, and quotes corresponding to them: