I’ve always found something eerily unpleasant in the term “human resources”. Reducing humans to resources seems, quite literally, dehumanising, but the modern manager’s job is built on this hard skill of organising workers’ hours and abilities in order to maximise output. As many of us know, this means soft skills like teamwork and communication often fall by the wayside.

However, researchers have found that AI could, somewhat unexpectedly, make management a more human profession. With AI optimised to handle the harder “resources” side of management, flesh and blood managers will be freer to meet the softer “human” demands of their teams. If AI systems are deployed carefully, there will be less to distinguish good management from leadership, and this could, potentially, be very positive.

When choosing workplace leaders, you might think that the best candidate will always be the most competent, or that people would prefer the warmth of leaders from their own country. However, prejudice plays a much bigger role than we might like to admit. Research by Yih-Teen Lee at IESE Business School found that perceptions of a leader’s competence are directly linked to how developed their home country is. Great news for Scandinavians, bad news for the rest of us.

While popular opinion sees countries like Sweden as enlightened beacons of tolerance, they are far from immune to culture war bigotry. The far-right Sweden Democrats party has recently set its sights on, of all things, drag queens reading stories to children in libraries. Their complaints that such events might “sexualise children” have done little to prevent them from going ahead, but some now, sadly, take place with a strong security presence, raising serious questions about what constitutes a “safe space”.