Understanding and managing the interaction between humans and generative AI will be the next big challenge for occupational health professionals, new research argues, as technology profoundly alters the roles, risks, and responsibilities of the human workforce.
Writing in the journal Occupational Medicine, researchers from Microsoft and Imperial College London examined the impact of the emergence of AI tools might have on the workplace and on occupational health (OH) professionals.
While AI will bring a multitude of benefits, the paper warns that it will simultaneously create new health issues and challenges.
As far as occupational health is concerned, AI is likely to make accessing workplace health support much easier, for example by automating and simplifying booking processes and appointments. AI tools can also streamline the management, tracking and analysis of workplace health and workplace health data.
For many employees, meanwhile, AI will simply become a technology that simply exists alongside their role rather than something that replaces their jobs entirely. However this will profoundly change how many roles work, altering the likely demands on workers as a result. While the 'drudge' of many day-to-day roles will be taken away by AI, human roles will become more focused on handling and managing complexity.
For example, supervising AI agents is likely to have hidden challenges and these demands must be quantified, acknowledged and built into roles. Similarly, spotting AI 'hallucinations' (when AI presents fabricated information as facts) may become increasingly challenging as the technology becomes more autonomous, putting extra stress and burdens on those humans working alongside AI tools.
"As AI absorbs routine tasks, human roles may shift toward stewardship, problem-solving, or emotional labour, all with their own psychological demands," the research team, led by Imperial clinical research fellow Dr. Lara Shemtob, said.
"Individuals who currently operate independently may be expected to manage a number of AI agents and move through iterations of management practices as organisations and the technology they deploy evolve with time.
"It is essential that the demand of supervising AI is quantified, acknowledged and built into roles as they evolve, to avoid hidden workloads that negate the benefit of automating outsourcing tasks," Shemtob added.
As the sophistication of AI accelerates, and the tasks it can be given (or taken away from human co-workers) increases, we will see growing "role ambiguity" within workplaces, she added, again potentially creating uncertainty, stress and anxiety.
"AI will alter the roles, risks and responsibilities of the human workforce across all the sectors that OH supports. Understanding and managing the interface between humans and AI is therefore the next critical frontier for occupational health, and one upon which we must bring our expertise to bear," Shemtob and her team concluded.
SOM president Professor Neil Greenberg said: "AI, we all know, is here to stay and is likely to become an ever-more important part of all our working lives. The benefit it can bring in terms of improving automation and processes - simplifying and streamlining the way we access healthcare support at work - has the potential to be immensely positive.
"Yet, as this work illustrates, embedding AI in workplaces may yet come with downsides, especially to workers' mental health. The way AI will change how human co-workers interact and spend their days, how it will change expectations, workloads and demands - and simply the uncertainty and precariousness it brings to many roles - may create a whole raft of new challenges for occupational health professionals. It is a workplace transformation organisations need to be preparing for right now."
The full study is available in SOM's Occupational Medicine journal for those interested in the detailed findings.
