Speakers
- Dr. Balca ARDA — Kadir Has University
- Yunus Emre Öztaş — University of Leeds
- Prof Dario Guarascio — Sapienza University of Rome
- Jelena Reljic — Sapienza University of Rome
Abstract
Artificial intelligence is increasingly reshaping workplaces, occupations, and organisational practices across the global economy. While advocates highlight its potential to drive innovation, productivity, and economic growth, concerns remain about its implications for job quality, worker autonomy, skills, inequality, and the future of decent work. These tensions sit at the heart of Sustainable Development Goal 8, which calls for sustained economic growth alongside productive employment and decent work for all.
This webinar brings together two complementary perspectives on the relationship between AI and work. The first seminar explores the lived experiences of creative workers navigating the rise of generative AI, revealing complex tensions between efficiency and creativity, democratisation and precarity, as well as automation and human agency. It raises important questions about identity, meaning, and authorship in an AI-enabled workplace, arguing for worker-centred approaches to technological adoption. The second seminar takes a broader view, examining emerging evidence on AI's labour market impacts across occupations, organisations, and economies. Drawing on recent scholarship, it highlights how AI's effects on employment, skills, income distribution, and workplace power relations are shaped not by technology alone, but by organisational choices, institutional frameworks, and policy interventions.
Together, the two talks move beyond simplistic narratives of technological optimism or pessimism. They invite us to consider how AI can be developed, governed, and implemented in ways that support both innovation and human flourishing, opening a critical discussion about whether AI can genuinely contribute to the ambitions of SDG 8 and the creation of more inclusive, productive, and decent workplaces.
Looking for more in the field?
Explore more events from SDG 8: Decent work and economic growth and Springer Nature's Springer Nature SDG Talks.