Future of Work with AI Agents: Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential across the U.S. Workforce
2025/06/06 by Yijia Shao, Humishka Zope, Shao, Yijia +11 · 19 voices · 15 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Human-Automation Interaction and Safety #Ethics and Social Impacts of AI #Digital Economy and Work Transformation
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2506.06576
Abstract
The rapid rise of compound AI systems (a.k.a., AI agents) is reshaping the labor market, raising concerns about job displacement, diminished human agency, and overreliance on automation. Yet, we lack a systematic understanding of the evolving landscape. In this paper, we address this gap by introducing a novel auditing framework to assess which occupational tasks workers want AI agents to automate or augment, and how those desires align with the current technological capabilities. Our framework features an audio-enhanced mini-interview to capture nuanced worker desires and introduces the Human Agency Scale (HAS) as a shared language to quantify the preferred level of human involvement. Using this framework, we construct the WORKBank database, building on the U.S. Department of Labor's O*NET database, to capture preferences from 1,500 domain workers and capability assessments from AI experts across over 844 tasks spanning 104 occupations. Jointly considering the desire and technological capability divides tasks in WORKBank into four zones: Automation "Green Light" Zone, Automation "Red Light" Zone, R&D Opportunity Zone, Low Priority Zone. This highlights critical mismatches and opportunities for AI agent development. Moving beyond a simple automate-or-not dichotomy, our results reveal diverse HAS profiles across occupations, reflecting heterogeneous expectations for human involvement. Moreover, our study offers early signals of how AI agent integration may reshape the core human competencies, shifting from information-focused skills to interpersonal ones. These findings underscore the importance of aligning AI agent development with human desires and preparing workers for evolving workplace dynamics.
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- By surveying workers and AI experts, this paper gets at a key issue: there is both overlap and large mismatches between what workers want AI to do & what AI is likely to do. AI is going to change work [bsky, 68 points, 2 comments]
- A new study explores how AI agents are reshaping the workforce. But instead of just asking what AI CAN do, it asks what workers WANT it to do. This includes an equal partnership with AI, not full auto [bsky, 4 points, 1 comments]
- Future of Work with AI Agents [hn, 2 points, 1 comments]
- Fascinating chart from new #study “Future of Work with AI Agents” by @echoshao8899.bsky.social et al. Implication: the market currently overvalues jobs in #management or #administration that #AI age [bsky, 2 points, 0 comments]
- Future of Work with AI Agents: Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential across the U.S. Workforce arxiv.org/abs/2506.06576 [bsky, 2 points, 0 comments]
- Highly relevant! "Future of Work with AI Agents: Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential across the U.S. Workforce Yijia Shao" by Humishka Zope, Yucheng Jiang, Jiaxin Pei, David Nguyen, Erik Br [bsky, 2 points, 0 comments]
- Future of Work with AI Agents: Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential [hn, 1 points, 0 comments]
- arxiv.org/abs/2506.06576 [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
- Fascinating result from a new paper: there are fewer YC companies in the high desire, low capability sector than the low desire, high capability sector. Isn't "make something people want" supposed to [bsky, 1 points, 1 comments]
- Future of Work with AI Agents: Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential across the U.S. Workforce #workbank #workforce #automation #augmentation #artificialintelligence #work #employment #agent [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
- In our new paper: arxiv.org/abs/2506.06576 We collaborate with economists to develop an audio-enhanced auditing framework. - 1500 domain workers from 104 occupations shared their desires. - 52 AI agen [bsky, 1 points, 1 comments]
- Interesting paper: arxiv.org/abs/2506.06576 [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
- 41% are investing in rejected areas arxiv.org/abs/2506.06576 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
- src: arxiv.org/pdf/2506.06576 (Future of Work with AI Agents: Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential across the U.S. Workforce) [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
- The study referred to in the article arxiv.org/pdf/2506.06576 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
- [PDF] Future of work with AI Agents: Auditing automation and augmentation potential across the US workforce arxiv.org/pdf/2506.06576 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
- Preprint: Future of Work with #AI Agents: Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential across the U.S. Workforce arxiv.org/abs/2506.06576 #AIAgents [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
- 📘 What do workers actually want AI agents to do? A new paper from Stanford titled The Future of Work with AI Agents proposes a principled, survey-based framework to evaluate this, shifting the focus [bsky, 0 points, 1 comments]
- The paper came up with a scale & is arguing that no matter what AI 'experts' think that people should do with AI & what the capability of AI is, the proof is in the pudding (what people think) so AI h [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
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