Ankur Kothari on robots, automation and the virtual workforce of the future

Ankur Kothari is a pioneer in the area of robotic process automation and the design of digital back offices. A co-founder of Automation Anywhere, he has been working over the last decade on transforming entire industries by introducing them to a digital workforce and human–robot partnerships that can help them scale efficiently. We met up in Hyderabad, a city in India where many of the world’s biggest companies locate their outsourced IT and back office operations. We have all heard that robots may be coming for our jobs, but I was curious to learn - will anyone really be sad to see transactional, routine tasks done by a machine rather than a human being?