PONE-D-22-21484The future(s) of unpaid work: How susceptible do experts from different backgrounds think the domestic sphere is to automation?PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Lulu P Shi,

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Additional Editor Comments:

Dear Authors,

I am glad to inform you that you paper (The future(s) of unpaid work: How susceptible do experts from different backgrounds think the domestic sphere is to automation?)

has been reviewed and our final decision is minor revision as suggested by our reviewers.

Congratulations and do necessary correction as suggested by the reviewers.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Comments

1. It really is a pleasure to read this paper. I think that the authors provide a very well-crafted and well-written paper, as well as an excellent and sound analysis of the automatability of unpaid domestic work. Previous studies focused on paid work, and rarely so on paid domestic work, so the authors’ study carries novel and important research results focusing on unpaid domestic work. The authors trace out how their work differs from other works in the literature, especially in terms of the methodology, and they put emphasis on analysing the link between automation and the future of work with methods from the science of Sociology. Importantly, from interviewing experts they can reveal how differences in experts’ backgrounds, i.e. between males and females, and between the UK and Japan, shape experts’ responses towards the automatability of domestic tasks. And they emphasize that this is something that is missed out in – especially other sciences’ – datasets of labelling or expert information. The authors find, among others, that the experts on average predicted that 39 percent of domestic tasks may be automatable within the next ten years. The results carry important implications for politics, the economy and society.

2. A few more comments: I think you should write into your Abstract that you apply a sociological approach to the study of automatability of domestic work. Please do the same to the first paragraph in your last chapter (Discussion and Conclusions).

3. On page 2, in the first paragraph of the Introduction, it would be good to extend the named literature with some further studies that replicated or approached the study by Frey and Osborne. Moreover, there exists some literature on automation and paid domestic work, which could be considered as well (e.g. Krenz and Strulik 2022, Mazzolari and Ragusa 2013).

4. On pages 12, 13 and the following, you are writing about the Delphi method, which has been applied. You used the method rigorously, but please provide some further explanations on the Delphi method, its usage, and some more details for a wider audience. Also provide literature on its theory as well as some empirical applications.

5. On page 12 in line 7 an “of” is missing.

6. On page 17 in the first paragraph, please insert the relevant authors’ names for “XXX”.

7. I would suggest not to name it “Frey and Osborne (2013, 2017) style methods”, but to directly name the methodologies that you refer to, e.g. labelling, which algorithm you refer to etc., on page 21, 22 and on some previous pages, and after having named the relevant content, then cite the authors/ studies, e.g. “following the approach by Frey and Osborne” or “similar to the study by…” or “(literature, year)”.

8. On page 21, in the second paragraph, you say “Neither Frey and Osborne’s prediction nor our figure are presented as forecasts”, however on page 11, 12 and the following, as well as on page 23, you are speaking about doing “forecasting rather than labelling” and “most widely used group forecasting method today is the Delphi method”. Please make sure to rewrite the relevant passages somewhat, in order to guarantee consistency of reading.

Reviewer #2: In this manuscript, the authors conducted a forecasting exercise in which 65 AI experts from the UK and Japan estimated how automatable are 17 housework and care work tasks.

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

- The authors used 285 experts based in the UK and Japan. They tried to identify comparable numbers of AI experts working in three different professional settings: academia, R&D (understood here as corporate research labs and start-ups), and business (e.g., venture capital and marketing). Any people works in automation/robotics companies are involved in this research? It will be very useful if we could get information from the manufacturer regarding their opinions, strategies, and plan to support the automation technology in the field of unpaid work.

- Instead of only discussing the impact on two modern countries, ie. Japanese and UK, could you explain more on how this research will impact the rest of the world? The automation is involve in the world, not only for the first world countries but also in third middle countries which are usually known as labor supply for unpaid worker. Possibly the motivation could be extend also to more general instead of only UK and Japan based analysis.

- Page 17, In the same vein XXX’s study suggest that >> are you sure this is XXX’s study?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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The future(s) of unpaid work: How susceptible do experts from different backgrounds think the domestic sphere is to automation?

PONE-D-22-21484R1

Dear Dr. Shi,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

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Kind regards,

Mahmud Iwan Solihin

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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