AI at Work

Who will ultimately benefit from having more of our work done by AI—employees or employers? What about potential harms, like forcing us to spend time cleaning up mediocre products—pushing down wages—or eliminating jobs altogether? And how can we best prepare for working in an AI-powered future?

Today on the show we have Maytal Saar-Tsechansky— a professor in the McCombs School of Business, who has been developing AI algorithms especially around improved decision making and achieving societal, business, organizational and personal goals. And we also have Samantha Shorey, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies. She studies the contributions of people who are often overlooked in our dominant cultural narratives about technology innovation—paying close attention to all the creativity and ingenuity of workers (especially women).

Looking for more great podcasts about AI? Then check out Generation AI. It’s produced by our friends over at The Drag Audio, a student-run podcast production house at UT Austin. They cover topics like making cities smarter, autonomous vehicles, election disinformation, and more.

Dig Deeper

Automating Essential Work (Samantha Shorey documented how integrating AI into the workflows of essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic increased their workload and made their daily duties more complex and technical.)

AI Will Transform the Global Economy. Let’s Make Sure It Benefits Humanity. International Monetary Fund (An IMF study predicts that in advanced economies, about 60 percent of jobs may be impacted by AI; about half of which might see lower wages or disappear.)

What jobs are safe from AI? Here are 4 career fields to consider, Desert News (Jobs in healthcare, education, law and creative fields might see fewer jobs eliminated by AI than others.)

Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier, Harvard Business School. (Study finds that the capabilities of AI create a “jagged technological frontier” where some tasks are easily done by AI, while others, though seemingly similar in difficulty level, are outside the current capability of AI.)

Will AI be an economic blessing or curse? History offers clues, Reuters (Technological advances through the ages have often ended up benefiting the wealthy, but doing little to help workers.)

Episode Credits

Our co-hosts are Marc Airhart, science writer and podcaster in the College of Natural Sciences and Casey Boyle, associate professor of rhetoric and director of UT’s Digital Writing & Research Lab.

Executive producers are Christine Sinatra and Dan Oppenheimer. 

Sound design and audio editing by Robert Scaramuccia. Theme music is by Aiolos Rue. Interviews are recorded at the Liberal Arts ITS recording studio.

Elements of the cover image for this episode were generated with Photoshop’s generative AI tools.

About AI for the Rest of Us

AI for the Rest of Us is a joint production of The University of Texas at Austin’s College of Natural Sciences and College of Liberal Arts. This podcast is part of the University’s Year of AI initiative. The opinions expressed in this podcast represent the views of the hosts and guests, and not of The University of Texas at Austin. You can listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, RSS, or anywhere you get your podcasts. You can also listen on the web at aifortherest.net. Have questions or comments? Contact: mairhart[AT]austin.utexas.edu