13/03/2025 - 5th Research Forum session 2024-2025: "Protocols, villages, and the AI-driven future of work: Some Wittgensteinian reflections"

5th Research Forum session of the academic year 2024-2025

Date: Thursday, March 13th, 2025

Time:  12pm 1:30pm

Room:  40.035, Sala de Graus Calsamiglia, Campus Ciutadella

Speaker: Lisa Herzog, University of Groningen

Chair: Camil Ungureanu, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Presentation -  Protocols, villages, and the AI-driven future of work: Some Wittgensteinian reflections

Abstract

This paper asks how the future of work organizations might be influenced by the spread of generative AI. Based on Wittgensteinian reflections on the nature of rules and rule-following, it argues that generative AI is able to pass on interpretations of workplace rules to new workers. So far, in many jobs the interpretation of the rules had to lie with those who do the actual work. In the future, it might become more and more embodied in AI systems that advise, monitor, and sanction workers. This reduces the necessity of bringing workers together in organizations. The ongoing trend of “fissuring” work organizations, e.g. through outsourcing, is likely to be reinforced. A possible scenario is a polarization of work organization into, on the one hand, what I call “villages” (in which the members of the community retain the right to interpret, or even write, their workplace rules), and, on the other hand, “protocolled jobs” (in which workers lose this right and become puppets of rules-with-algorithms). The paper concludes with some reflections on the broader societal implications of these developments. 

About the Speaker

Lisa Herzog works at the intersection of political philosophy and economic thought. She has held her position as professor of political philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Groningen since 2019. She holds a master (Diplom) in economics from LMU Munich, and an M.St. in Philosophy and D.Phil. in Political Theory from the University of Oxford. Between 2017 and 2022 she was a member of the Global Young Academy; she is currently a member of De Jonge Academie and Young Academy Groningen. Herzog has published on the philosophical dimensions of markets, liberalism and social justice, ethics in organizations, and political epistemology. She is a co-editor of the interdisciplinary journal Review of Social Economy. Her latest monograph is Citizen Knowledge. Markets, Experts, and the Infrastructure of Democracy. The current focus of her work are economic democracy and the philosophy of work.