Reconstructing jobs: Creating good jobs in the age of artificial intelligence

In this essay, we argue that the thoughtful use of AI-based automation, far from making humans obsolete or relegating them to busywork, can open up vast possibilities for creating meaningful work that not only allows for, but requires, the uniquely human strengths of sense-making and contextual decisions. In fact, creating good jobs that play to our strengths as social creatures might be necessary if we’re to realize AI’s latent potential and break us out of the persistent period of low productivity growth that we’re experiencing today. But for AI to deliver on its promise, we must take a fundamentally different view of work and how work is organized—one that takes AI’s uniquely flexible capabilities into account, and that treats humans and intelligent machines as partners in search of solutions to a shared problem.