What should the guardrails around AI be?

AI is coming at us fast. How do we protect workers?

Organizations are on a mission to shape policy around emerging technologies, such as AI, so everyone can benefit 
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With workers on the frontlines of the AI revolution facing uncertainty about how they’ll be affected by technology, the AFL-CIO wants to make sure the workers have a say about its use.

“We like to say, we’re sort of in the Wild West. It’s like we’re in a live-action experiment where companies are testing out these tools and purchasing new systems, sometimes without a lot of insight. And workers really bear the very human cost when those things don’t work out well,” says Amanda Ballantyne, the executive director of the AFL-CIO Technology Institute.

Establishing AI Guardrails with Workers in Mind

Joshua Elder, VP, Siegel Family Endowment

It’s estimated that 70% of the skills used in most jobs will change within the next five years and 20% of professionals hired in the U.S. today have job titles that didn’t exist in 2000.

In an effort to better understand the impact of AI and other emerging technologies on workers, the nonprofit Siegel Family Endowment has awarded more than $16.3 million in grants to dozens of organizations, including the AFL-CIO Technology Institute.

“As artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies continue to reshape our society, it’s crucial that we support organizations that look at how technology is implemented across education, work environments, and policy,” said Joshua Elder, vice president and head of grantmaking of Siegel Family Endowment, in the statement announcing the grants.

“Our latest grants reaffirm our commitment to building a more inclusive technological future by supporting comprehensive research, shaping human-centered policies, and fostering community-driven innovation to ensure these advancements benefit everyone,” Elder added.

Will AI Shrink or Grow Workplace Issues?

“Workers really are experts in the work that they do,” says Ballantyne.

Amanda Ballantyne
Amanda Ballantyne, executive director, AFL-CIO Technology Institute

The AFL-CIO, which represents 61 national and international labor unions, established the separate institute in 2021 to engage workers in the research, development, and implementation of AI.

Ballantyne says the grant will help expand the work her organization is doing with partners that include the National Science Foundation, Carnegie Mellon, and Microsoft.

“This is a moment where collective bargaining is a very critical tool to help elevate the knowledge of workers and come up with rational pragmatic guardrails. Those are the types of things that actually will make people trust these technologies more and support their deployment, right?”

She says some of the topics being examined are health and safety, workforce development strategies, potential violations of workers’ rights, and the amplification of income inequality

Cutting Through the Hype and Fear Around AI 

Lessons learned can help shape policy.

That is where grantees like Data & Society play a part. The independent nonprofit research organization has a mission of working to produce empirical evidence to help shape technology policy. 

“If you look at the public discourse around technology, it tends to either be dystopian or cheerleading,” says Alice Marwick, Ph.D., director of research at Data & Society. 

“You’ve got the people in Silicon Valley who are like, ‘This is the greatest thing since sliced bread. This is the salvation of the American economy.’ And, on the other hand you have some people saying, ‘We’re living in a dystopia, the world is ending.’

“The problem with each of those approaches is they’re so all or nothing, and they don’t allow for nuance.”

Marwick says because the organization draws from lived experiences of diverse populations, it looks at differential impacts of technology to consider the pros and cons, while working with a network of academics, policymakers, industries, and civil society workers. 

Surveillance vs. Privacy: What If the Information is Wrong?

Alice Marwick, Ph.D., director of research, Data & Society

Among the areas the organization is examining is surveillance – ranging from warehouses to call centers and offices. For example, one of Data & Society’s reports focuses on an app to track in-home care workers.

“Surveillance is always sold to employers as a way to make your workers more efficient, to reduce fraud, and also to learn more about your employees. The idea is that you can be better at managing them if you know more about them,” says Marwick.

“But, what we find is that often these tools of surveillance aren’t providing accurate information, or they’re allowing employers to make incorrect inferences about their employees.” 

She raises a key question: What expectation of privacy should we have at work?

“Should we be expected to have our eye movements surveilled or our keyboard strokes surveilled when we’re working an office job? This is something that would have been completely out of the norm 20 years ago. It’s becoming, especially post-Covid, increasingly normalized,” stresses Marwick.

She adds, “The further you go down the economic ladder, the more intensive these surveillance mechanisms become.”

Striking the Balancing Between Pros and Cons 

Striking the balance between technology that enhances outcomes and ensuring low- and middle-income working families benefit is a big part of the focus of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, another Siegel grantee. It’s been examining the impact of technology on the labor market for several decades. 

Heidi Shierholz, Ph.D., president, Economic Policy Institute

EPI plans to use its funding from Siegel and its own research to formulate suggested government guidelines that take into account both sides of AI – the negative and the positive.

One of the main goals is to provide a clearer picture of the realities of artificial intelligence and what it really means for the world of work. 

“There are potential concerns on the impact on job quality in certain jobs,” says Heidi Shierholz, Ph.D., president of the Economic Policy Institute.

“We should take that seriously. But we should also take very seriously what the broader impact of an AI-induced burst of productivity growth would mean for the living standards of working people.”

Shierholz adds, “I think one of the things this grant is really focused on is that more comprehensive view – both the positive impacts, the negative impacts.

“And then what policies need to be put in place to foster the good things and steer the bad things in a different direction.” 

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.