AI@Work carries out a number of large externally funded research projects that examine how artificial intelligence is changing work and organizations. These projects combine ethnographic and process based methods to study AI in practice, across sectors that include healthcare, knowledge work, robotics, and digital platforms. Together they form a long term research program built on collaboration with international partners, industry organizations, and public funders such as the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and the European Commission.
AI@Work_Research Projects
LIAISON: Learning in Artificial Intelligence Across and Beyond Occupational Communities.
NWO, Knowledge and Innovation Covenant (KIC)
Algorithms can enable efficient and effective medical diagnoses for patients. However, several challenges can hinder the development and adoption of algorithmic technologies in day-to-day clinical practice. These challenges include a lack of shared understanding among stakeholders, unknown biases in existing data sources, insufficient domain knowledge, difficulties in interpreting results, and limited user acceptance. To tackle these challenges, novel use-cases of AI in clinical workflow must be collectively designed, tested, and evaluated for and before implementing them in practice.
The project led by dr. Mohammad Rezazade Mehrizi investigates how novel algorithmic technologies can be applied in medical diagnosis through collaborative learning among medical professionals, technology communities, policymakers, and patient groups. The main goal of the project is to facilitate the effective co-creation and implementation of AI while creating a “learning community” where all relevant stakeholders can collaboratively experiment with and learn from specific use cases. The project also aims to identify novel skills and areas of knowledge required for successful AI implementation and design of educational programs to support the future workforce.
The team includes PhD candidate Saba Jalali, PhD candidate Ferdinand Mol (KIN Center for Digital Innovation), dr. Willem Grootjans (Leiden University Medical Center, LUMC), dr. Mark van Buchem (LUMC), dr. Harmen Bijwaard (Hogeschool Inholland) and several partners: CMRAD, Contextflow, Oxipit, Nederlandse Vereniging Medische Beeldvorming en Radiotherapie, Nederlandse Vereniging voor Radiologie, Longkanker Nederland (patient community).
GenAI@Work: Studying the Impacts of Generative AI on Knowledge Work, Management and Organizations
NWO, Open Competition
With the rapid advancement of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools such as ChatGPT, Midjourney, Harvey, and Co-pilot, new ways of generating knowledge have entered work, organizations and society. This has sparked popular discourses, with some expressing the fear of technology taking over occupations and others touting promises of increased productivity and creative possibilities. While GenAI’s radical capabilities might indeed justify such hopes and anxieties, the GenAI@Work project focuses on its more profound, indirect, and longer-term implications at the workplace. GenAI brings to the work of professionals and organizations, as well as the consequences for organizational social structures.
GenAI@Work consists of three research projects. One PhD project explores how GenAI tools change knowledge creation, sharing, and validation and how these changes impact social structures within the workplace. Another PhD project studies how GenAI tools transform knowledge integration within and beyond organizations, and their effects on organizational structures and policies. The third project is a collaborative effort involving researchers from the AI@Work research group — prof. dr. Marleen Huysman, dr. Ella Hafermalz, PhD candidate Sybil Liu and PhD candidate Julia Baraban. These researchers explore eight organizations that are already using GenAI across various industries. Based on their findings, the team will develop practical guidelines for the responsible development, use, and management of GenAI at work.
EMANAIRE: Human agency in AI-augmented work
European Commission, Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant
EMANAIRE studies how organisations can introduce and use AI in ways that preserve and strengthen human agency: people’s ability to understand decisions, question them, exercise judgement, and influence how their work is organised. Bringing together doctoral researchers, universities, and partner organisations, EMANAIRE investigates AI as it is used in everyday organisational practice. Across different settings, we study how AI reshapes leadership, collaboration, skills, careers, and relationships at work. By connecting these perspectives, the project aims to help organisations make more informed choices about AI and develop ways of working in which people continue to play a meaningful role in shaping technological change. The team includes prof. dr. Marleen Huysman and dr. Ella Hafermalz (KIN Center for Digital Innovation) together with dr. Anna Essen and dr. Elmira van den Broek form the Stockholm School of Economics and three PhD candidates.
Robots at work: Bridging the gap between the robotic development and workplace use
NWO, Vidi grant
Professional service robots aim to serve as partners in teams and are employed in unstructured work environments. Rigorous academic knowledge is thus needed to understand how robots are used in practice and with what consequence for work. Such knowledge can generate a productive dialogue between engineering science and organization science, creating synergy between traditionally disconnected fields and ensuring that robots support rather than undermine people's work lives.
Prof. dr. Anastasia Sergeeva together with her team, PhD candidate Melissa Sexton and dr. Stella Kyratzi, works on a Vidi grant to explain how work is changing when robots are entering work settings to serve as partners of humans. The team will conduct several ethnographic studies of professional service robots at work to develop novel methods and approaches to recognize the embeddedness of the robot into work teams, as well as richness, unruliness, and institutional nature of work domains. The project aims to develop actionable principles for the design and development of robots, as well as guidelines for managers that are planning to introduce robots to a workspace.
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