Work becomes more human in the age of AI

Source Domain: www.rochester.edu

Artificial intelligence is increasingly framed in stark extremes: either as a revolutionary tool poised to transform society for the better or as a looming threat ready to replace human workers. Headlines about “robot nurses,” rogue chatbots, and indefatigable virtual assistants can make the technology feel both exciting and deeply unsettling.

But according to University of Rochester experts from business, medicine, and ethics, the reality is more nuanced. Daniel Keating ’05S (MBA), Kathleen Fear, and Jonathan Herrington say the more important question may not be whether AI will replace humans—but which parts of human work should never have consumed so much human attention in the first place.

Keating, a clinical associate professor of information systems and AI at URochester’s Simon Business School, sees AI less as a wholesale replacement for workers than as an agent that will fundamentally reshape how people spend their time and energy at work.

The technology excels at repetitive cognitive tasks, but human judgment, leadership, and creativity remain essential.

“You have to use it as a creative palette to which you bring your best ideas and hone your strongest questions,” Keating says. “The directive is to have AI make your ideas better.”

More than a machine

“There’s so much hype about AI in the world,” says Fear, senior director of digital health and AI at University of Rochester Medicine. “AI can feel like something happening to people—something they’re not in control of, that will change their lives and jobs without them knowing what to do about it.”

At the same time, the experts see a future in which AI is most useful not when it imitates humanity, but when it creates more room for distinctly human capacities: empathy, creativity, judgment, and connection. And even some of the messier human elements—like mistakes, emotions, intuition, and uncertainty—remain features instead of bugs.

“AI can feel like something happening…

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