“Artificial Intelligence at Work: Power, Participation and the Future of Labour Governance”

Department : Law & Tax

Speaker : Antonio ALOISI from IE University in Madrid

Room : S 118 and by Zoom link: https://hec-fr.zoom.us/j/92624558721 

“Artificial Intelligence at Work: Power, Participation and the Future of Labour Governance”

Abstract

What do bosses do in the age of AI? More precisely: what happens to managerial power and to worker autonomy when decisions about hiring, performance, pay and dismissal are increasingly delegated to algorithmic systems?

This presentation argues that AI at work is not merely a story of efficiency or innovation. It is a story about power. Across recruitment, remote monitoring, performance evaluation and wage-setting, algorithmic management systems promise objectivity while intensifying command and control. They amplify managerial prerogatives, translate discretion into code and render authority less visible and more difficult to contest. Yet the transformation is not one-sided. Managers, too, become entangled in systems they do not fully understand or control. The result is a paradox of simultaneous empowerment and dispossession: both workers and managers are augmented by AI and constrained by it.

Drawing on legal doctrine, case law and regulatory developments across the EU, the talk critically examines whether existing safeguards (data protection rights, anti-discrimination law, information and consultation mechanisms and the risk-based architecture of the AI Act) are capable of addressing this shift. While these frameworks offer important tools, they often operate as procedural guardrails in a terrain that has structurally (quantitatively and qualitatively) changed. Rather than treating AI as an external compliance problem, the keynote proposes a multidimensional, anticipatory and participatory approach to workplace technology governance. It explores how data protection and anti-discrimination norms can work in tandem to make automated decisions documentable and contestable, and why collective actors (trade unions, works councils and other representative bodies) are uniquely positioned to rebalance informational asymmetries and prevent abuses. Because data are relational, governance must be collective.

The central claim is that AI does not simply reshape how work is managed; it reshapes who holds power at work. If left unchecked, it risks entrenching opaque hierarchies under the guise of neutrality. But it could also be harnessed to democratise the workplace, enhance agency and enable new forms of co-determination.