Automation from the Worker's Perspective
Ben Armstrong, Valerie K. Chen, Alex Cuellar, Alexandra Forsey-Smerek, Julie A. Shah
TL;DR
This paper investigates worker perspectives on automation across nine countries using a large multinational survey, challenging the common winner-loser narrative. It combines descriptive statistics with an embedded experimental design to examine how work environment, technology interactions, incentives, and design affect perceived benefits and costs of automation. The findings show overall positive worker sentiments toward automation for safety, autonomy, and upward mobility, with five key predictors including task complexity, employer investment, trust and job satisfaction, upward mobility values, and financial incentives. The work highlights practical implications for policy and management by emphasizing worker voice, development opportunities, and fair incentive structures to realize positive-sum automation outcomes.
Abstract
Common narratives about automation often pit new technologies against workers. The introduction of advanced machine tools, industrial robots, and AI have all been met with concern that technological progress will mean fewer jobs. However, workers themselves offer a more optimistic, nuanced perspective. Drawing on a far-reaching 2024 survey of more than 9,000 workers across nine countries, this paper finds that more workers report potential benefits from new technologies like robots and AI for their safety and comfort at work, their pay, and their autonomy on the job than report potential costs. Workers with jobs that ask them to solve complex problems, workers who feel valued by their employers, and workers who are motivated to move up in their careers are all more likely to see new technologies as beneficial. In contrast to assumptions in previous research, more formal education is in some cases associated with more negative attitudes toward automation and its impact on work. In an experimental setting, the prospect of financial incentives for workers improve their perceptions of automation technologies, whereas the prospect of increased input about how new technologies are used does not have a significant effect on workers' attitudes toward automation.