The deployment of AI in the workplace has shined a light on long-standing problems: The deployment of AI-powered technologies in the workplace has been associated with an array of worker experiences and outcomes that warrant concern, including discrimination, unsafe working conditions, loss of privacy, and seemingly arbitrary disciplinary action or discharge, among others.
But these outcomes are not inherent to the use of AI. Employers' use of other technologies and even garden-variety management practices have perpetuated these outcomes for decades. The use of AI has shined a light on the challenges workers with little bargaining power and insufficient on-the-job protections face in our labor market.
Broader solutions are needed to improve worker outcomes in the era of AI: Policymakers should address the negative outcomes experienced by workers today, but they also should look beyond how the use of specific AI systems may degrade job quality and look deeper to the underlying conditions that enable employers to use AI in this manner: the imbalance of power between businesses and their workers.
Workers should have greater protections and a voice in workplace policies: Decades of weakened bargaining power and heavy reliance on employers for life necessities, such as healthcare and retirement, has made it exceedingly difficult for most workers to bargain over how AI technologies are being used in the workplace—let alone opt out of the use of AI-powered management and surveillance at work or walk away from unlawful or poor working conditions.
The objective of worker-centered AI policy: Increase the ability of workers to meaningfully engage their employers in how AI technologies are deployed in the workplace.
To achieve this straightforward objective, policymakers will need to address long-standing imbalances in the labor market; reduce AI-specific barriers to worker voice while banning the most egregious uses of AI; and support workers' ability to find better jobs.
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