In the last Resource Roundup, we discussed workers’ concerns about the specter of artificial intelligence and a changing job market. In this edition, we’ll explore why, and how, to prioritize workers as the nature of work changes.

Workers who don’t feel included in decisions affecting them will exercise whatever agency they can find. Incidents of employees resisting employers’ AI strategies have provided fodder for media observers. A report commissioned by one AI startup found that more than a quarter of all knowledge workers surveyed, and nearly half those in Gen Z, admit to undermining their company’s AI strategy.

Critics might label as Luddites those who are skeptical of AI. But when management pushes what it thinks is best for the bottom line, at the expense of their employees’ well-being, workers might see resistance as the only way to protect their livelihoods.

Businesses have reason to care what workers think. AI that’s responsive to workers and designed to complement their skills can improve the value that they offer their customers. What’s more, continuing on a path to a future in which terms of work are dictated, rather than negotiated, risks fracturing the social contract, threatening the stability that allows businesses to thrive in the first place.

The future of work is a matter of choice, as Liba Wenig Rubenstein, who directs our Future of Work Initiative, has written:

[It] is fundamentally shaped by questions of power and agency, not by technology alone. So, if we want to harness technology to solve problems that people want solved — rather than technology that may render people the problem that needs solving — we need to focus on how power is distributed, exercised, and balanced in the decades ahead.

This edition of Resource Roundup offers a look at emerging solutions that balance the needs of workers and the realities of technological change. Learn about workers’ attitudes toward AI, how they’re claiming agency, and the business case for AI deployment that augments skills, instead of cutting humans out of the equation.

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AFL-CIO

New Polling: Over 9 in 10 Favor Pro-Worker AI Agenda, Trust Unions More Than Either Party to Deliver

Unions are enjoying widespread popularity, even if few Americans belong to one. Polling recently released by the AFL-CIO on attitudes toward AI shows that workers are concerned and support greater protections. Many are looking to organized labor to play a lead role in securing them.

The results of the polling suggest a model for an agenda that places workers’ interests at the center of the debate. Broadly, workers want decision-making to rest with people, transparency about employers’ use of AI, and a say in the development and implementation of the technology in the workplace.

Read the full findings from the AFL-CIO and David Binder Research.

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Blood in the Machine

They just formed the biggest tech worker union in the US. They plan to rein in AI and curb layoffs

IT employees with the University of California system recently voted to join the University and Professional Technical Employees (UPTE) union. The move encompasses more than 2,000 workers, who were sparked to action by concerns about AI. The new members will be covered by an existing contract that provides for collective bargaining over how the technology is used in the workplace.

Greater worker power in the tech sector could show an alternative to the prevailing command-and-control dynamic of management dictating the rules, an organizer told the tech journalist Brian Merchant.

Read Merchant’s dispatch on the UPTE organizing drive and what it means for tech workers.

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MIT Sloan School of Management

Pro-worker AI, explained

In AI, corporate leaders see a productivity boost. But workers often see a threat to their jobs, at least when they aren’t prioritized in decision-making.

A team of MIT economists created a framework for evaluating the impact on workers of technologies that increase productivity, making the case for AI deployment that builds on workers’ skills and improves businesses’ competitive advantage. It’s an approach that’s focused on expanding how companies can serve their customers, rather than blindly automating existing tasks. 

Read more from MIT Sloan about what an AI future that supports workers could look like.

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MIT Spectrum

At MIT Sloan, Examining How AI is — and Isn’t — Improving Health Care

Medicine has emerged as a lucrative use case for AI. The practice of medicine is a very human one, however — for clinicians and patients alike. Adapting the technology to the realities of clinical practice requires a sensitive approach, the focus of MIT management professor Kate Kellogg’s research.

For one, AI shouldn’t replace autonomy. An AI tool that flags possible sepsis can alert nurses to review a patient’s chart, rather than replace them in the diagnostic process, for instance. And the outputs of AI tools should be descriptive, informing users of the data that led to a conclusion.

The key is ensuring that healthcare workers are properly educated on the uses and limitations of AI, Kellogg advises. Read more from MIT about keeping humans at the center when designing AI tools for the medical field.