Artfully Integrating AI: Proceeding Responsibly With Worker-Centered Best Practices

AI’s “great acceleration” is a vital moment for intervention on behalf of the workers tasked with integrating autonomous systems. In this chapter, we draw on eight months of field research across two sites of essential work newly deploying automation, in order to examine how frontline employees—here, janitorial staff and recycling sorters—take on the supervisory responsibilities and troubleshooting required by emerging technologies. Workers are called to produce this labor on top of existing duties, attuning to the machinery’s regular mistakes and often still performing the original activities meant to be relieved by AI. We argue that a humane future with autonomous technologies cannot be secured through design alone, but requires developing processes of worker-centered integration. We offer a set of recommendations on the installation, evaluation, and maintenance of AI in essential sectors, and reflect on new governance strategies meant to regulate the promotion and use of artificial intelligence within workplaces.