���˲�Ʊ

Story written by Dr Sarah Keenihan, AIML

Artificial intelligence (AI) promises a lot when it comes to improving workplace efficiency. Technology  mundane tasks in administration, provide better pricing recommendations to sellers or streamline recruitment, as just a few examples. 

But what about the people involved? How will AI affect them?  from the Australian Institute for Machine Learning is developing a tool to find out. 

Working with the South Australian Centre for Economic Studies, the , and the , Zygmunt is exploring what sorts of health and safety risks in workers might arise if AI is incorporated into a workplace. 

“We’ve already got systems in place to manage the physical risks of technology – for example, safety around robots in vehicle production lines and automated dispatch centres for large retailers like Amazon,” said Zygmunt.

“What we don’t have yet are processes in place to manage the psychosocial risks of technology.” 

Here, Zygmunt is referring to aspects of work such as disruption in daily routines or reductions in human autonomy. What might it feel like if an algorithm is creating work rosters, and you’ve got a reduced opportunity to have a say in how your weekly hours are scheduled? 

“What we’re trying to do is develop some sort of scorecard where people making decisions about adopting AI in a workplace can do an impact assessment and identify any potential issues that might arise,” said Zygmunt. 

The starting points for this work are ethics principles around the use of AI that various countries and organisations have developed in recent years – including things like accountab