The ILR School’s Center for Applied Research on Work (CAROW) recently awarded three seed grants for new research that addresses questions at the intersection of AI and organizations, employment and work.
These AI and Work Seed grants are made possible through a generous gift from ILR alumnus Robert Bluestein ’67.
Seed grant award recipients and project descriptions:
Project title: The impact of labor relations institutions and generative AI on job attractiveness: A cross-industry experiment.
Project team: John McCarthy, Global Labor and Work, Cornell University, Illinois; Michael Maffie, Cornell Peter, Stephanie Nolan, Department of Hotel Management
Project description: This project investigates how job seekers respond to expectations about generative AI (GenAI) conveyed in job advertisements. Specifically, we ask whether organizational characteristics such as the presence of unions, labor-management partnerships, and a strong culture that values employee voice and equity make prospective employees more receptive to roles that require the use of GenAI.
This project also investigates the mechanisms behind these reactions. Do perceptions of voice, equity, and job security explain how job seekers respond to GenAI expectations, and do these patterns vary across industries and roles facing different levels of automation risk?
By uncovering how industrial relations institutions are shaping attitudes toward emerging technologies, this study aims to help organizations develop more effective recruitment strategies in an AI-driven labor market.
Project title: Meetings using AI and worker voices
Project team: Zoe West, Worker Institute. Sanjay Pinto, Worker Institute Fellow. Aiha Nguyen, Data and Society. Alexandra Matescu, Data and Society. Virginia Delgast, ILR School. Joy Min, SUNY Buffalo
Project description: This project brings together researchers, labor advocates, and practitioners to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping work across sectors and share strategies workers, unions, and advocates are using to advocate for worker voice in AI governance.
While AI is often touted as improving efficiency and decision-making, its impact on the quality of work, worker voice, and employment conditions raises important concerns. The meeting will foster cross-sector dialogue on organizing, bargaining, and policy strategies to protect workers’ interests, especially in industries facing funding pressures and labor shortages. The conference aims to advance a fair, democratic, and worker-informed approach to AI implementation by centering the worker perspective in conversations about AI governance.
Project title: The role of creativity bias in shaping human-AI collaboration and creativity at work
Project team: Dr. Brian Lucas, Department of Organizational Behavior, Cornell University, University of Illinois. Rene Kizilcec, Information Science, Cornell Bowers CIS
Project description: This project investigates how AI tools such as ChatGPT can transform the creative work process. Generative AI can increase individual creativity, but research suggests it can also reduce the diversity of ideas between groups.
This project investigates how well-documented creativity and decision-making biases influence how employees engage with AI during idea generation. Through a series of experiments, we test whether these biases persist in AI-assisted contexts and whether AI systems can be designed to mitigate them. By identifying how psychological biases shape human-AI collaboration, this research aims to inform the development of AI tools that foster both individual creativity and collective ideation diversity in the workplace.
