AI Policy Observatory for the World of Work

The AI Policy Observatory for the World of Work (AIPOWW) is the first Observatory highlighting how AI regulation, development and governance are occurring across the world, and what this is beginning to mean, and will mean for the world of work, and workers’ experiences.

AIPOWW is an original collaboration with the International Labour Organization Research Department, Work in the Digital Economy (WiDE) team, and others.  From 2022, we have been researching regulation, development and governance surrounding AI in 6 jurisdictions. Our national and regional cases and Global AI Tracker for the World of Work are important instruments to aid governments, worker representatives, companies, and policymakers to identify up-to-date information about how AI is transforming, and will further transform, the world of work.

In response to the widespread and burgeoning deployment of AI across the world, governments are pursuing policy programmes to regulate how AI is introduced and integrated into societies. Various regulation approaches are emerging across the Global South and Global North, where different jurisdictional priorities reflect the specific political economies, histories, and legal frameworks within which they operate.

Businesses have prioritised innovation and development of AI products and services, taking different angles as they attempt to keep abreast with global, regional, and local competition and trends. Some companies are developing codes of conduct to ensure the best implementation of AI augmented products and services into companies. Companies ideally are also ensuring good practice when trialling AI in their operations management systems and/or when they are asking workers to integrate new tools with AI augmentation. Simultaneously, policymakers have pursued specific strategies to propel development of AI and a range of hoped benefits for their countries’/regions’ success in this space. Some areas are considering or are beginning to apply a ‘sandbox’ approach, where products must be tested as another feature of development, before being allowed onto the market.

Civil society, including trade unions, are now beginning to realise how important it will be to consider the likely impact that the development of AI will have for workers, and look for ways beyond hard law regulation, to protect workers from potential harms that AI may cause, via governance strategies. In response to the development, and surrounding regulation, of AI, there are emerging forms of governance at the social level across jurisdictions. Unions are actively lobbying and engaging in collective bargaining. Research organisations are producing impact assessment typologies for identifying best practices to protect the futures of work. Social dialogue is ideally part of the governance agendas for each jurisdiction.

AIPOWW is dedicated to rigorously documenting, and comparing the regulation, development and governance relating to AI that is now occurring in all parts of the world, to determine both what this currently means for, and will mean for, the world of work.

AIPOWW’s categories of analysis are as follows:

• Regulation: Legal dimensions and regulatory advancements in hard and soft law, surrounding the advancement of AI in each jurisdiction.
• Development: Innovation and promotion of AI by governments and the business community, competition and industrial policy, sandbox initiatives, and codes of conduct developed by business. This also involves government approaches to development and innovation of AI. The Sandbox approach is of interest here, where product and service testing has become ever more important given the rapid pace of this market and the potential risks and benefit for AI and the world of work.
• Governance: Jurisdiction-specific reforms, including education and institutional reframing, emerging industrial relations and work and employment responses (unions, works councils, institutional governing boards, etc.), civil society responses, and social dialogue.
• World of work: The world within which we work is shaped by a constellation of forces across industries and sectors, including working conditions evidenced, the kind of contracts available, the social protections (or lack thereof), and the myriad aspects of the employment relationship that need to be taken into account when considering the integration of AI to working environments.

AIPOWW is dedicated to the ILO’s Fundamental Principles for decent work, in looking at how regulation is forming, governance is emerging and development is approached, by a series of global players.

Each case study is oriented around these themes, so that we can, over time, make comparisons and good judgements concerning best practices in protections for the world of work.