Interest Area
Workforce
Our Thinking
We believe that AI and emerging technology are fundamentally shaping the nature of work and employment. How might we best empower workers and communities to shape and utilize new technologies and prevent harms in the workplace?
Our Inquiry Areas
We prioritize advancing actionable insights into how AI and emerging technologies transform work and the work environment. We aim to support organizations that address workers’ needs and perspectives around work-impacting technologies through pilot programs, case studies, and other research initiatives.
Inquiry Area
AI in the Workplace
While empirical research on AI and work is growing, AI’s possible impacts on work and workers remain largely unknown. AI affects not just the content of jobs (tasks that might be replaced), but also the context – including the hiring, management, and monitoring of workers, as well as the worker experience. We seek to better understand both how employers are deploying AI in the workplace and how workers might harness new technologies to advance their livelihoods.
Inquiry Area
Rural Workforce Ecosystems
Many cities have systems in place to generate growth: skilled workers, high quality universities, entrepreneurial spirit, quality of life, ample infrastructure, and a base of venture capital that can turn new ideas into profitable companies. However, not everyone within these cities participates in or benefits from rapidly growing, innovative sectors. Not all cities become high-performance hubs, and not every hub emerges organically. Creating more equitable innovation in these communities would mean changing the systems that support innovation, so that more people are included in, and benefit from, rapidly growing and innovating sectors.
Highlighted Grantees
MIT Work of the Future
The MIT Work of the Future initiative envisions an economy where dramatic advances in automation and computation go hand in hand with improved opportunities and economic security for workers. Growing out of MIT’s Work of the Future Task Force (2018-2020), the Work of the Future Initiative at the Industrial Performance Center conducts multidisciplinary research on the ways technology is changing work.
Upwardly Global
Upwardly Global is the premier national organization working to support immigrants and refugees with international credentials to restart their careers in the United States.
New Growth Innovation Network
New Growth Innovation Network (NGIN) is a non-profit organization, focused on closing structural opportunity gaps to ensure that economically disenfranchised people of color, women, and neglected geographies are a core part of regional economic growth and prosperity.
Workforce Insights
Big Ideas | From Our Grantees
Introducing Our BRIC Case Studies
The Black River Innovation Campus (BRIC) in Springfield, Vermont, is a powerful example of community-driven innovation in a rural community…
From Our Grantees | Research
Q&A with Siegel Research Fellow and Director of Technology Policy at the Center for American Progress Megan Shahi
Siegel Research Fellow, Megan Shahi, reflects on why she’s urging tech companies to take concrete actions to protect democracy in…
From Our Grantees
Raising the Bar on AI Reporting
AI Primers for Journalists is the latest in a series of emerging tech primers researched, written, and published by Aspen…