Human-Machine Partnerships in the Future of Work: Exploring the Role of Emerging Technologies in Future Workplaces

Abstract

Technologies in the workplace have been a major focus of CSCW, including studies that investigate technologies for collaborative work, explore new work environments, and address the importance of political and organizational aspects of technologies in workplaces. Emerging technologies, such as AI and robotics, have been deployed in various workplaces, and their proliferation is rapidly expanding. These technologies have not only changed the nature of work but also reinforced power and social dynamics within workplaces, requiring us to rethink the legitimate relationship between emerging technologies and human workers. It will be critical to the development of equitable future work arrangements to identify how these emerging technologies will develop relationships with human workers who have limited power and voice in their workplaces. How can these emerging technologies develop mutually beneficial partnerships with human workers? In this one-day workshop, we seek to illustrate the meaning of human-machine partnerships (HMP) by highlighting that how we define HMP may shape the design of future robots at work. By incorporating interdisciplinary perspectives, we aim to develop a taxonomy of HMP by which we can broaden our relationship with embodied agents but also evaluate and reconsider existing theoretical, methodological, and epistemological challenges in HMP research.