Work After AI

Labor markets are going through fundamental changes. New technologies based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) present both opportunities and challenges for workers and firms. Aspirations of workers evolve as new work-life balances strike. What to expect for the future of work?

1. How do AI technologies affect workers and firms’ performance? AI technologies embody formidable opportunities to perform complex tasks more efficiently. Our research studies how AI technologies spread across workplaces and how they affect workers’ tasks.

2. How do AI technologies affect labor market inequality? AI technologies affect workers differently depending on their occupations and thus their education. In turn, the differential effects of AI will potentially weaken or strengthen labor market inequalities along usual cleavages – gender, age, nationality, disability. Documenting how AI effects differ across workers is of prime interest.

3. Do AI technologies suppress bad jobs and spur the creation of good jobs? Understanding whether AI alleviates or exacerbates the growing phenomenon of the working poor is key to designing appropriate policies.

4. Can AI technologies allow workers to better fulfill their work aspirations? There is a debate whether digital natives have different work values and aspirations than previous generations. Our research documents how work matters for workers in the future. Which type of effective
retraining and upskilling could enable previous generations to adapt to AI and pursue meaningful careers?

Team (work in progress):
• Alexia Delfino (Department of Economics)
• Antonella Trigari (Department of Economics)
• Erika Deserranno (Department of Economics)
• Giulia Giupponi (Department of Social and Political Sciences)
• Jerome Adda (Department of Economics)
• Julien Sauvagnat (Department of Finance)
• Massimo Anelli (Department of Social and Political Sciences)
• Thomas Le Barbanchon (Department of Economics)
• Tito Boeri (Department of Economics)