Artificial intelligence (AI), is finding its way into organizations in both planned and unplanned ways. Not just manual labour but also tasks such as collaboration, coordination, management and even creativity are increasingly supported or even replaced by traditional and generative AI tools. This has many unpredictable and often unintended consequences on work practices and organizations. In the AI@Work group we study these changes as they unfold. By embedding our researchers in organizations for many months, we make sense of changes as they are happening.
The AI@Work group is a community of researchers, part of the KIN Center for Digital Innovation, who study these consequences. They use an ethnographic research approach: embedded into an organization, researchers study the impact of a newly introduced technology for many months and sometimes years as "digital anthropologists". Their research spans diverse organizational contexts, from radiologists utilizing AI for diagnostics to top sport coaches analyzing biometric data from athletes' wearables, and human resource managers employing algorithms to hire the right candidates. Headed by Marleen Huysman, the group interacts intensely with the practice world beyond academia, advising stakeholders from government to multinational companies. Thanks to the work of AI@Work, a generation of “reflective digital practitioners” is emerging: managers who can see through hype and make their own independent decisions, users who can collaborate with designers to help build sociotechnical systems, and designers who understand the social context for which they design technological tools.
