FW-HTF-P: Office Work in the AI Age

University Of Iowa, Iowa City IA

Investigators

Abstract

Office work is an important part of the American workplace across sectors, involving tens of millions of workers. Further, doing office work is not just about the processing of paperwork and information; it also involves organizational knowledge, communication and relationship building, and other interpersonal skills. These twin issues of job reliance and job complexity raise concerns for the design of artificial intelligence-based office automation tools that use software agents, machine learning, and data analytics. Many such tools are designed without workers' needs or organizational complexity in mind; mistakes here can lead to reduced quality of life and job loss for workers, and worse outcomes for firms and customers. This planning project will develop a multi-disciplinary research agenda toward the careful scientific study of both office work and the design of automation that affects it, with the goal of improving both office automation and training and outcomes for workers. The project involves three main activities. The first is a comprehensive literature review using a combination of the critical review method, the systematized review framework, and a review of state-of-the-art office automation systems. The second involves qualitative analysis of a series of focus groups conducted with a broad sample of office workers about their daily work practices and challenges, their professional development and training, and their perceptions about the future of their job and of office automation. The third main activity is a three-day ideation workshop that will build on the findings from the first two activities. The research team will convene multidisciplinary academic and industry experts from human factors, computer science and artificial intelligence, economics, labor and human resource management, public policy, and equity and diversity to identify domains of office work and research themes that look most interesting, promising, and impactful for future research. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.