Analysis

Technology has been replacing manufacturing jobs for years. Is the same about to happen to white-collar work? Will new faster, smarter computers start destroying more jobs than they create?

Technologists and economists are now arguing that we are approaching a turning point, where professional jobs are becoming automated, leaving less and less work for humans to do. David Baker investigates the evidence and asks what this means for society, the individual and equality.

Should we beware the machines? Professor Stephen Hawking has warned the rise of Artificial Intelligence could mean the end of the human race. He's joined other renowned scientists urging computer programmers to focus not just on making machines smarter, but also ensuring they promote the good and not the bad. How seriously should we take the warnings that super-intelligent machines could turn on us? And what does AI teach us about what it means to be human? Helena Merriman examines the risks, the opportunities and how we might avoid being turned into paperclips.

Producer: Sally Abrahams.

Social mobility is a good thing - right? Politicians worry that not enough people from less-privileged backgrounds get the opportunity to move up in life. But are we prepared to accept that others lose out - and move in the opposite direction? Jo Fidgen explores the implications of downward social mobility.

Does free speech include a right to cause offence? Many thinkers have insisted that it must - but debate has raged for millennia over where the limits to insult can be set. While some maintain Enlightenment values must include permission to shock, offend and even injure, there is a growing sense that rights must be balanced by responsibilities to one's community, in speech as well as action. And as technology has given each of us an worldwide platform to express any idea, anywhere, the potential for instant, global offence has only grown. How are we to define how much is too much - and what really distinguishes insult from injury? Edward Stourton speaks to historians, theologians and philosophers to explore the outer limits of free expression.

Scotland last year showed how dramatic referendums can be. So what would an in-out vote on the EU be like? What would be the crucial strategies for a winning campaign? The stakes would be huge for the UK, and if those who want a vote get their way, this could happen within the next few years. Chris Bowlby talks to key potential players and observers about their fears and hopes, lessons drawn from Scotland, and campaign plans already being made behind the scenes.

Producer: Chris Bowlby.

'Maskirovka' is the Russian military strategy of deception, involving techniques to surprise and deceive the enemy. Lucy Ash looks back over its long history from repelling invading Mongols in the 14th Century, to its use to confound the Nazis in World War II, to the current conflict in Ukraine. Translated literally maskirovka means "a little masquerade", but it also points to strategic, operational, physical and tactical duplicity. When heavily-armed, mask-wearing gunmen - labelled the 'little green men' - took over government buildings in Crimea last year, was this a classic example of maskirovka in the 21st century? All nations use deception as a strategy in war, but Analysis asks whether any other nation has pursued guile as an instrument of policy so long and so ardently as Russia.

Mark Mardell forecasts how the world could change in 2015, aided by top BBC journalists Lyse Doucet, Carrie Gracie, Kamal Ahmed and Bridget Kendall.

We firmly believe that our choices - about what we eat and how we vote - reflect the inner core of our being. But do those choices originate in principle - or simply because of what we have done in the past? Psychologist Nick Chater asks if precedent matters more than principles and discovers a complex interplay between the two forces which govern the choices we make.

The recent so called Trojan Horse dispute in some Birmingham schools shone a light on how separately from the liberal British mainstream a significant conservative bloc of British Muslims wants to live. Although some Muslim parents objected, most seemed happy to go along with rigorous gender segregation, the rejection of sex education and ban on music and arts lessons.

East is East (extract with Jane Horrocks and Ayub Khan) is playing at the Trafalgar Studios, London until 3rd January, and then on tour.

Contributors:

Margaret Heffernan explores why big organisations so often make big mistakes - and asks if the cure could be the aviation industry's model of a "just culture".

In the past ten years, there have been a string of organizational failures - from BP to the banks, from the Catholic Church to Rotherham. In each instance, hundreds, even thousands of people could see what was going on but acted as though they were blind. Silence ensured the problems continued and allowed them to grow.

The conditions that create the phenomenon called "wilful blindness" are pervasive across institutions, both public and private. Wherever there have been cases of organisational failure you typically find individuals who are over-stretched, distracted and exhausted. They cannot see because they cannot think.

Businesswoman and writer Margaret Heffernan argues that the solution is a "just culture"; which means organizations that encourage people to speak up early and often when things go adrift, without fear of being silenced.

Contributors:

Producer: Gemma Newby.