Labor Issues

Impact on Future Employment

As AI continues to evolve, so too do the concerns about its impact on the workforce. In many ways, AI makes jobs more efficient, but its growing capabilities may also lead to unemployment. The Future of Jobs Global Report 2025 indicated that 41% of companies are planning reductions in workforce as artificial intelligence tools and models continue to expand, causing many to fear replacement by AI and the loss of their jobs. Current sectors most at risk are ones that lend themselves to automation, like customer service, banking, insurance, and even transportation. Other roles that could be impacted include factory/warehouse workers, research analysts, and computer programmers. 

Yet in the same aforementioned report, AI was also identified as one of the fastest-growing core skills sought out by employers. This means workers will likely be expected to have a familiarity with and working understanding of AI moving forward, which can box out those who have had minimal experience with this technology. Skill divides may become even more exacerbated, and information literacies (technology literacy, AI literacy) will be more valuable than ever. While the future is very much uncertain, it is clear that AI implementation and reliance will impact and shape the labor market over the next several years. 

Exploitation 

Despite appearances, AI does still require human labor in order to perform effectively, especially when it comes to training and improvement. This industry, referred to as "crowdwork," "data labor," or "ghost work," has boomed with the increase in AI models requiring training and testing. People are needed to manually review, tag/label, annotate, and moderate data, which often results in exposure to disturbing and psychologically damaging content. In other cases, their roles involve inputting provocative prompts and assessing bias and/or offensiveness of the model's responses. Doing this for hours a day can take an immense toll on one's mental health, and unfortunately, most of the time these workers are contract hires who receive minimal compensation, so they do not have access to health benefits, cannot earn enough for the resources they may need, and can be indiscriminately fired from their jobs. These workers are considered "invisible," as their labor is largely unacknowledged by the companies they work for while also going unseen by consumers. When companies market AI tools/features as if they simply work like magic, it is easy to overlook the very real human cost.

Compensation & Use of Work

Compensation issues have also begun to arise out of the need for vast amounts of data required to train generative AI models. Often, this data is gathered by "scraping" the internet, harvesting all kinds of information and content to be used for gen AI tools. If your work is available online, it could easily be scraped and subsequently used in the generation of content for another user. In other words, your work could be utilized without you ever knowing and you would never receive any compensation for its use. 

Personal Responsibility

• Consider your own use -- informed use

• • Be aware of: misinformation, reproducibility, information about the tool,  your own company/organization's policy 

  • • Link to Limitations page (under Demystifying)

  • Tool evaluation prior to use 

  • Acknowledgement of use