Will a robot take your job?

Majority of senior managers say they would use a robot to do white collar office work

They have been taking over manual roles and replacing workers on factory production lines for decades, but robots might soon be doing the jobs of white collar workers too.

A survey of workplace managers has suggested that the world depicted in the hit TV series Humans, where the lines between technology and people are increasingly blurred, could become a reality.

It found 70 per cent of managers would consider using a robot on their team and almost half would not feel bad about replacing a human job with a robot.

The survey, conducted by Expert Market, comes as recent developments in Artificial Intelligence have triggered warnings from leading scientists of the threat the technology poses.

While creative jobs such as marketing and design were seen as been unsuitable for robots, office managers, finance roles and IT were areas where managers felt they may play a role.

Most feel machines would be better placed to perform roles like administration, answering the telephone, emailing and writing reports.

They listed among the benefits of having a robot on the staff included that they would produce a consistent standard of work, they would not take sick days or leave the company.

A spokesman for Expert Market, a business to business marketplace, said: 'The results suggest that most people are quite comfortable with the idea of working alongside robots.

'A lot of managers were not overly worried about swapping their workforce for machines, as almost half of those asked said they would not feel guilty for hiring a machine over a human.

'Perhaps in order to stay "future proof" it might be worth brushing up on those design skills.'

The survey asked 200 senior managers in a range of industries about their attitudes towards robots and automation.

In many industries, robots have been used increasingly to speed up production lines and provide a consistent quality of work.

However, earlier this month a rogue robot killed a technician at a car factory after he was picked up and crushed by an automated arm.

The death is thought to be the first in Europe to be caused by an industrial robot and has chilling overtones of a science fiction movie.

In films such as AI, for example, many jobs are performed by robots, allowing the human population more time for leisure until the robot begin to malfunction while in the hit TV series Humans, life-like androids used as household servants but become increasingly difficult to control.

According to the survey, most managers would prefer robots to look like a machine rather than human-like, but 68% said they would like one to help free up their own time.

Senior positions like chief executives were seen as been unsuitable for robots, but 52 per cent said they would use robots to do the jobs of office managers, 44 per cent said robots could do IT and 28 per cent said finance was suitable.

Only 15 per cent of those questioned were worried about robots taking over the world.