Date/Time
Date(s) - Fri 22 May
16:00 - 17:30
Note: back to the usual room for this series
Speakers: Rebecca Downes (VUW School of Management) and Jocelyn Cranefield (VUW School of Information Management)
One of the most common questions about AI concerns the future of work. Will artificial intelligence usher in a post-work society, or trigger mass unemployment and social unrest? At a more immediate level, most people at least want to know: is my own job safe?
In a recent paper, Dr Jocelyn Cranefield, Dr Mian Wu, and Dr Rebecca Downes draw on interview data to argue that people rely on ethics-informed heuristics when deciding where to use (and not use) generative AI in their professional roles. These ethics-informed heuristics shape individual use and thereby influence where AI tools might gain traction in organisations. They’ll explain how their findings fit with a recent Harvard working paper, which uses a tidy piece of research design to distinguish performance-based resistance to AI (for example, that the system is not yet good enough) from principles-based resistance (that using AI feels morally wrong). The authors conclude that some jobs are likely to remain categorically off-limits, not because they cannot be automated, but because such automation is experienced as morally repugnant.
Taken together, the key question for predicting job displacement may not be whether a job can be automated, but what that job means—socially and morally. They suggest that the boundary between performance and principle offers a compelling basis for predicting where disruption is likely to occur in the workforce, and where it will meet durable resistance. They’ll be interested to hear whether the AI & Society community agrees.
These seminars consider AI’s social impacts in a range of areas, and discuss how AI can best be overseen to maximise positive impacts and minimise negative ones.
They are open to anyone who is interested in attending. Presenters don’t presuppose any technical background. If they present AI systems, they do it ‘from scratch’, in ways that should be accessible to everyone.
Discussing AI’s social impacts is a very interdisciplinary task, and speakers and participants come from many different backgrounds, in academia, government, industry and NGOs.
The series organiser is Ali Knott (ali.knott@vuw.ac.nz): please email Ali if you’d like to be added to the mailing list.