AI-Mediated Work as Occupation: An Occupational Science Perspective on Meaning, Identity, and Justice

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming part of everyday work. Workers use it to prepare documents and evaluate information, while some may encounter it through systems that assign or assess their work. Research has examined productivity, organizational adoption, collaboration, and algorithmic management. These studies offer important evidence but tell us less about how workers experience AI as part of their daily work. In this conceptual paper, I apply occupational science to AI-mediated work. I argue that patterned and situated AI-related activity can be examined as occupation: it takes shape within workplace routines, can carry meaning for workers, and can affect their opportunities to participate. Drawing on occupational science and selected AI-at-work scholarship, I propose an analytic map with seven elements: human–AI actions, work integration, interpretive work, responsibility work, relational work, identity work, and boundary work. I consider how workplace conditions shape these elements and their consequences for workers. This perspective connects questions about AI at work with workers’ experience of what they do and what their contribution means.