First we asked the participents to name the occupational category most suitable for them. These are, from left to right:

1. In red: Consultant.

2. In green: Employer.

3. In light blue: Self employed.

4. In Purple: Wage worker.

The purpose of this question was to get an overview of the occupations of the the participants, while also providing REELER with categories for segmenting the following questions.

This question was first of the two central questions of the event. The question was posed by REELER four times during the event:

1.       When the participants had all arrived, before any of the presentations.

2.       After the first presentation by REELER coordinator, Cathrine Hasse.

3.       After the first coffee break, before the first panel debate.

4.       After the conclusion of the final panel debate – immediately prior to the end of the event.

The first three will be compared in this section. The fourth stands out since some participants had left before the final questions, and others had joined following the lunch break, which makes the composition of voters different from the first three. However, it is worth noting here that the distribution of votes in the final votes resembles the first three.

For future reference, the participants were asked chose between four different options the first two times, and five in the final two. These were:

1. In green: Me.

2. In light blue: The employer.

3. In yellow: Education.

4. In dark blue: Union(s).

5. In red: Politicians.

In the first vote a strong majority thought that the employers were most responsible for securing a meaningful work life with robots. This remained the dominant trend throughout the four votes, however, it was not nearly as strong towards the end.

By the second vote this majority had already declined significantly. Following Cathrine’s presentation, a significant portion shifted their vote from the employer to education, and only one person voted for the unions. The number of people who thought it was the responsibility of each individual secure a meaningful work life rose slightly as well.

The third vote sets itself apart by from 1 and 2 by including politicians as a possible answer. Politicians were included here by popular demand; participants addressed REELER to ask for the category to be included. These results suggest that a significant majority agreed with this decision, as most of the votes for politicians was moved from education, which implies that approximately half of the people who voted for education in the second vote might have put their vote there for lack of a better alternative.

From vote 1 to 3 the top category, employer, has fallen from 35 to 25 despite the number of respondents rising from 61 to 66. This corresponds to a fall from 57.3% to 37.9%. These are the percentages corresponding to the responses of the third vote:

1. Employer (37.9%)

2. Politicians (25.8%)

3. Education (22.7%).

Expressing the top three catogories in terms of percentages allows for a comparison with the final vote.

The final vote is the least reliable of the four since a significant number of the original participants had left and others had joined. All in all the amount of respondents fell from a high of 66 to 44. Of note is the fact that the amount of people, who thought that the individual was personally most responsible for securing a meaningful work life remained constant throughout the event and ended as a shared second. When the top four are expressed in the percentages we get the following distribution:

1. Employers (31.8%)

2-4. Education; Politicians; Me (20.5% each).

The question: "What type of competences will we be needing in the future?" was the second of the two central questions of the event. The question was posed by REELER three times during the event:

1.       When the participants had all arrived, before any of the presentations.

2.       After the first presentation by REELER coordinator, Cathrine Hasse.

3.       After the conclusion of the final panel debate – immediately prior to the end of the event.

The first two will be compared, since the same participants voted on both, and the third vote will be presented as well. However, as with the first question, the third vote stands out in that the composition of participants differs significantly from the first two. This means that the comparison with these is less reliable.

As mentioned in the beginning the first vote was taken prior to any presentations and can thus be considered a sort of baseline. Here is a translation of the most significant (biggest) words:

1. Teknologiforståelse: Technological literacy 

2. Programmering: Programming. 

3. Kreativitet: Creativity. 

4. Kritisk sans: Critical thinking. 

5. Samarbejde: Cooperation. 

6/7: Viden: Knowledge / Etik: Ethics. 

The second vote:

As a response to Sophie Hæstorp Andersen's question, the audience were asked to type in three of their work tasks each that they thought could be automated.

The bigger the words, the more recurring the words were in the answers. The four most recurring words were:

1. Tasteopgaver: Typing tasks.

2. Informationsøgning: Information search.

3. Databehandling: Data management.

4. Rutineopgaver: Routine tasks.

That the top four words revolve around an office theme may to some extent reflect the composition of the participants – intermediaries between robot developers and robot users, rather than manual workers. The top four tasks mentioned here are of a sort which, prima facie, seems easily automatable in that they can be conceptualized as a particular kind of algorithm. In this regard it is interesting to note the 5^th and 6^th most mentioned tasks:

5: Mødeplanlægning: Planning meetings.

6: Opgaveretning: Assignment grading.

While number 5 seems to follow the pattern of 1-4, assignment grading stands out. While grading assignments is something that teachers routinely do, it does not necessarily follow an algorithm, but seems to require some skills that have traditionally fallen outside the scope of the automatable, especially within the humanities; e.g., interpretation, 'deep' analysis and understanding metaphors.

Ida Auken asked the audience to each write 5 words that they connected with robots entering the labor market. Three words, in particular, stood out. From largest to smallest these are:

1. Mulighed: Possibility.

2. Hjælper: Helper.

3. Usikkerhed: Uncertainty.

Possibility stood out by far among the other words and contains positive connotations suggestive of a general optimism about the future of work – think, conversely, about the term 'risk', which is entirely absent from the word cloud. This is further corroborated by the second largest word, 'helper', which is also positive – again, one could have imagined a gloomier term; competitor (for a job), for instance.

Choosing the word helper is interesting here for another reason, since it implies a clear hierarchy, which awards primacy to humans and a secondary, supportive role to the robot. Participants don't imagine themselves being subservient to robots, but rather conceive of these as enhancing their practices.

As it stands, the third largest word, 'uncertainty' is the only word that can readily be interpreted as having negative meaning. It could be considered as a contrast to the biggest word, 'possibility', in that it entails a somewhat negative outlook on the future. Yet, it is worth noting that the term is can actually point to a suspension of judgment; it can be foreboding, but might signal more of a cautious attitude than outright aversion.

The general tone of the word cloud is in keeping with the tone of question 6 in that it is overall positive.

Morten Smistrup asked the audience to provide an estimate of the risk that social strife would undermine the benefits of using AI and robots. The audience was asked to choose from the following options, from left to right:

 1. In green: Very big.

2. In blue: Big.

3. In yellow: Small.

4. In purple: Very small.

This question was answered following his talk, which was nuanced and slightly optimistic in its view on the use of robots in manual labour-settings. At first glance the distribution might appear to be approximately 50/50, but it is considerably skewed with 15.7% more people estimating a big or very big risk of social strife undermining the gains of using robots/AI than those who estimate the risk to be small or very small.

One the one hand, the result of this poll may seem hard to reconcile with the overall tendency of the previous questions that point to a generally optimistic view about robots in work place. Yet, on the other hand, it indicates precisely the complexity of this field as is often times touched upon in REELER's empirical data. Though robots may be seen as potentially positive with regards to efficiency and relief of hard and tedious work, their impact on social and economic cohesion appear more dubious.

Jesper Balslev asked participants to indicate whether they thought research funds should be allocated to research on work-creating technologies. Participants were asked to choose from the following options:

1. In green: Yes.

2. In blue: No.

3. In yellow: That sounds silly.

4. In purple: I don’t understand the question.

The participants voted overwhelmingly in favor of yes.

Professor Bent Greve asked the audience to indicate whether or not they thought retraining/reskilling should be an individual right – as well as a requirement - for each worker. The participants were asked to choose between the following options:

1. In green: Yes.

2. In blue: No.

3. In yellow: Maybe.

4. No colour: Don’t know.

The question points to the connection between rights and duties, a connection which has existed for more than a century within the Danish labour movements. This connection has often been brought to the fore using the slogan: "Gør din pligt og kræv din ret" (In English: Do you duty and claim your right).

The framing of the question also serves to underscore the overall point of his presentation. While the ultimate responsibility for securing a meaningful work life lies with the individual (i.e. it is a duty of the individual), it is a burden that individuals are unable to carry or lift on their own . That is, they have to be awarded the right of reskilling.

While the majority of the participants indicated that they agreed with the proposal, a significant minority could not decide either way.

Jakob Rubæk Holm posed the final question from the presenters to the participants. He asked the participants to specify to which extent they agreed with the following statement: “To the extent that there is a trade-off between a meaningful work-life and economic growth, the meaningful work life should have priority” on a scale of 1 to 5. 5 indicating the highest degree of agreement, 1 the lowest.

3.9 was the average score of votes, and the distribution shows that very few participants expressed disagreement with the statement.