Sarah O'Connor

speaker

261 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 3 Jul

Sarah O'Connor’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford · LIVE: We Are Not Machines - with Sarah O'Connor · 3 Jul 2026 podcast

It's too intense.

It's too exhausting.

It's really lonely.

I don't get to talk to anyone anymore.

And he, yeah, he's now transferred back to his old warehouse.

Yeah, so this mine in Sweden was right up near the sort of fringe of the Arctic Circle and they mine copper there and various other minerals.

And it is one of the most sort of technologically advanced mines in the world, or so they say.

So it used to be that miners would drive vehicles around below ground, so very deep down.

It's horrible down there.

It's like really dark.

It's really humid and claustrophobic.

And now the vehicles are autonomous, so they drive themselves around.

and the miners sit in a control room.

They can take over the vehicles if they need to, but a lot of the time they're just sitting there, they're watching what's happening on big screens, they're in a comfy chair, and they're listening to Spotify, they're listening to the ice hockey, and the ones that I spoke to were quite satisfied with this change in their working conditions.

So I think there's a few differences.

One difference is that the reason that in Amazon they don't have humanoids walking around doing the whole thing is that that technology is not ready yet.

And so in some ways, humans are still kind of plugged into...

a system which is like part robot, part human, but is increasingly being paced by the capabilities of the robots.

Whereas I guess for the miners, they do not need to be in the cab anymore.

And so that means that there's the potential for a much kind of greater improvement in their health and safety.

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