Desire for Work Automation
Shaping Alternative Narratives to Technological Determinism
Intro
Recently, I was annoyed to see an article repeatedly popping up on my LinkedIn complete with the usual “Insightful!”, “So important.” comments - and a bit of pearl-clutching thrown in for good measure. It was yet another article written by a tech company owner about what people are really using AI for these days. In a plot twist that surprised no one, a quick dig into the study used revealed a small, non-probability sampling of Reddit and Quora users. This was, disappointingly, what informed the “insights” written up in the article enjoying all those clicks.
Articles like this tend to tick a lot of boxes. They normally have:
✓ a narrative of technological determinism
✓ author/researcher from the profit-making side of tech
✓ a limited group (e.g., young, male) being used as representative of everyone
✓ high levels of emotion, lows levels of substance
This narrowness around the discussions of AI and automation has similarly limited the discussion related to possible ways in which we can 1) critique and 2) shape our use of technologies in our working lives. The discussion remains necessary and is ongoing - particularly in recent academic papers from philosophy, psychology, sociology, and political science disciplines. However, the discussion needs to widen as technology rapidly develops to help bring in a richer and more varied set of narratives if we hope to avoid the denial of access, participation, and benefit for many AI users.
In the spirit of building a bridge from scientific theory and practice to public discourses (to the role the learning plays in society), let’s consider the idea of automation through AI at work. Rather than discussing the inevitability angle (i.e., robots will soon replace humans), or the ethics angle - let’s instead consider automation of work tasks through desirability. That is, what is our desirability of automating our work? And how do we participate in the application of some, much, or no automation as a reflection of our desire?
The inspiration for this came from a paper recently published the journal Philosophy Compass. In the paper, called The Desirability of Automizing Labor: An Overview, the author argues that “there is a kind of technological determinism underlying the label “ethics of automation,” which assumes that automation is something that is unavoidable and that we cannot hold back, but only steer in the right direction by considering its ethical implications,” (Waelen, 2025, p.5). I’ll use that paper and that application of the term desirability to expand upon the following in the post:
Why we might not want to autonomize our work
How we might resist (over)autonomizing our work
Why not automate?
At the heart of this question is the broader one of “Why do we work, anyway?” I imagine people would say they work to pay the bills. Of course, but what else? What are the other reasons you go to work? What makes you get up, shower, go into an office or log on from home, complete the tasks, rinse, and repeat? What makes you stay in a role or leave? What makes you want to do things differently? For that, let’s consider a couple of perspectives from Organisational Psychology.
First up is Self Determination Theory. I explained in my MSc thesis that,
In a magnanimous co-authoring moment, two papers published in 2000 defined Self Determination Theory (SDT) as an understanding of human motivation that requires considering the innate psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Ryan & Deci, 2000). This theory on motivation and innate human needs is less commonly used as a theoretical basis for studies than JD-R theory in Organisational Psychology, however it is often referenced because of the direct relations between autonomy support and employee work wellbeing (Dettmers & Bredehöft, 2020; Lopes et al., 2014; Schultz et al., 2015).
The key words in that theory on motivation when put in the context of work are:
Competence - this includes the chance to demonstrate it (i.e., doing something well and it being noticed) and to develop it (i.e., learning) at work
Autonomy - this involves how and when and in what order you do your work tasks; and the ability to decide those things
Relatedness or Connectedness - this involves a sense of belonging and of being attached to others in your work
A large and lengthy amount of research exists supporting the theory that these 3 factors function as basic human psychological needs, and that in the space of work they will increase worker wellbeing. So, if we consider these factors supportive of our wellbeing during work tasks, we would wish to preserve, nurture, and find new ways of evolving them - surely?
Let’s consider another perspective that is less of a developed theory and more of an investigation. In a paper called Differences among a satisfied, a meaningful, and a psychologically rich working life, researchers investigated what makes for a good working life. In a study of 678 employees from diverse jobs, the participants rated their job satisfaction, work meaningfulness, and work psychological richness. Psychological richness at work was defined as “the extent to which one’s (work) life is characterized by complexity, entails a variety of interesting and perspective-changing experiences, and involves feeling a variety of deep emotions,”(Zacher & Baumeister, 2024).
The study found the strongest link to psychological richness was the variety of skills required for the job. This suggests that interesting jobs with diverse and complex challenges often involve the application of diverse skills, such as those one would learn and add to as a career went on. And we would wish to preserve, nurture, and find new ways of evolving those challenges and skills - surely?
Let’s remind ourselves before the final example that ‘affect’ in psychology generally refers to a particular type of emotion, mood, and sometimes the reaction that shows a person is feeling that emotion/mood.
Affective Events Theory (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) “focuses on the immediate affective consequences of specific work events. This theory has stimulated research on the effects of variations in work events and experiences rather than on the longer-term and relatively persistent consequences of stable job design features,” (Ilies, Bono, & Bakker, 2024, p.65). It seems a theory that’s focussed on the less persistent would be useful considering contemporary careers we’re likely to experience nowadays. Sometimes stable job features feel almost quaint, don’t they?
The value of citing AET is to highlight how research using it to inform analyses has found that “employees are generally more likely to experience uplifts in enriched or resource-laden work environments characterized by social support, task significance, and feedback. When organizations provide more of these stable job resources, employees have more fruitful daily interactions with their colleagues, are better equipped to achieve their goals,” (Ibid., p.66). I use this theory to reinforce the argument for desirability and value being placed of humans working well with other humans and its contribution to better work life.
Automation in Achievement
In a paper called Automation, work and the achievement gap (Danaher & Nyholm, 2020), researchers argued that achievement plays a key role in making work meaningful. They also wondered how advances in AI and automation might give rise to achievement gaps in the workplace. They argued that such gaps could potentially limit a person’s ability to participate in meaningful work.
When you imagine achieving a desirable professional goal, are you acting alone? And, in your experience of achieving desired professional goals - have you ever done so alone? It may be in this gap of reacting to questions rather than reflecting upon experience relating to questions where we might find a similarly empty solution in automation. In the same way that someone tasked with reducing department spend for the next financial year will propose solutions that look good on a spreadsheet (whilst causing a host of new people problems), someone looking to increase efficiency via automation will overlook the human collateral damage. It isn’t to suggest that automation is never the answer. Rather, I’m suggesting that automation is best considered with a more adequate valuation of human participation. I’m suggesting that reducing opportunities for employees to satisfy their basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness will result in less meaningful work and reduced wellbeing. And finally, I’m suggesting that building this into the structure of ‘work’ is harmful to employees, organisations, and societies.
What do we do?
Because we are autonomous creatures and we wish to come together to problem-solve, let’s think of actions to reshape the technological deterministic narrative in relation to work automation on two levels.
Individual:
resist using automation mindlessly; identify where automation is causing you to devalue or lose something important (e.g., writing skills, interpersonal skills, etc.) and choose the human version instead
encourage/request/create spaces where work happens that is not automated; e.g., preserve brainstorming sessions for humanness only in which your team comes together to talk, wonder, what-if, query, and collectively conceive of something
find, support/amplify, and add to alternative narratives that are not positioned in technological determinism nor consumerism
Organisational:
those in management/leadership positions must put more emphasis on the role and value of teams/teamwork output; this needs both a culture of support (e.g., it’s in the shared language of the Org), and organisational design support (e.g., actively working to break down silos)
teamwork and inter-dependence between groups must be pursued, facilitated, and recognised; this is not a one-off team-building session, rather (re)designing how people work together, ensuring system technologies are coordinated across teams, etc.
consider adding (or using solely) wellbeing measures to inform cost-benefit analyses of automating tasks or roles; Richard Layard has done some innovative work on this on a societal scale for policy-makers in the UK (read more about it here)
Final thoughts
In Waelen’s paper The Desirability of Automizing Labor, she discusses economist John Maynard Keynes’ term technological unemployment. He describes it as “unemployment due to our discovery of means of economizing the use of labor outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labor,” (Keynes, 1930, p.360). To my earlier point on organisational design and the active structuring of what meaningful work looks like - a question for another post might be:
What happens in societies where (paid) labour is being completed by our technologies and humans struggle to find (and retain) meaningful work?
Is that desirable? And if not, what is?
Works cited and highly recommended further reading
Bankins, S., & Formosa, P. (2023). The ethical implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for meaningful work. Journal of Business Ethics, 185(4), 725–740. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-023-05339-7
Danaher, J., & Nyholm, S. (2020). Automation, work and the achievement gap. AI And Ethics, 1(3), 227–237. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-020-00028-x
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “What” and “Why” of goal pursuits: human needs and the Self-Determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli1104_01
Frayman, D., Krekel, C., Layard, R., MacLennan, S., Parkes, I., & LSE Centre for Economic Performance. (2024). VALUE FOR MONEY: How to improve wellbeing and reduce misery. https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/special/cepsp44.pdf
Ilies, R., Bono, J. E., & Bakker, A. B. (2023). Crafting Well-Being: Employees Can Enhance Their Own Well-Being by Savoring, Reflecting upon, and Capitalizing on Positive Work Experiences. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 11(1), 63–91. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-110721-045931
Keynes, J. M., 1930. “Economic Possibilities for Our Grand-children.” In Essays in Persuasion, 358–373. W.W. Norton & Co.
Rose, J. L. (2024). The future of work? The political theory of work and leisure. Annual Review of Political Science, 27(1), 283–300. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-041719-102644
Waelen, R. A. (2025). The Desirability of Automizing Labor: An Overview. Philosophy Compass, 20(1–2). https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.70023
Zacher, H., & Baumeister, R. F. (2024). Differences among a satisfied, a meaningful, and a psychologically rich working life. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2024.2417102
I’ve been thinking about SDT as it relates to AI, but the other two were new for me. Thanks for sharing!