AI is becoming part of work and organizing in many different ways. Sometimes organizations introduce AI deliberately, while in other cases employees start experimenting with new tools on their own. What happens next is rarely straightforward. Technologies are developed, interpreted, adapted, worked around, and sometimes resisted as people find ways of incorporating them into existing practices and ways of working.
The AI@Work group, part of the KIN Center for Digital Innovation, studies these developments as they happen in practice. Our researchers spend long periods of time inside organizations, often for months or years, following both how AI is developed and how it becomes part of everyday work.
We study AI across a wide range of professions, industries, and forms of knowledge work. Our research has taken us into settings as different as software development, historical research, recruitment, healthcare, professional services, sports, and the creative industries. We also study the work of the people who develop AI systems. These different settings allow us to examine how technologies and ways of working take shape together, rather than assuming that AI has a fixed or predictable impact.
Across these settings, we are interested in what happens to work and organizing when AI becomes involved: how people develop and share knowledge, how expertise changes, how decisions are made, how responsibilities are worked out, and how professional and organizational relationships develop over time. We also ask what remains surprisingly stable, and why.
Headed by Marleen Huysman, AI@Work works closely with organizations, policymakers, designers, and professionals outside academia. Through research, teaching, and collaboration with practice, we aim to help people look beyond both the promises and the fears surrounding AI and to make more informed choices about how it is developed and used at work.
