Digital Transformations in the Challenge of Activity and Work

6The “Old” Issues of the “New” Artificial Intelligence Systems in Professional Activities

Based on scientific and “gray” literature as well as exploratory fieldwork, this chapter discusses several types of issues and questions raised by the “new” Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems in relation to work. After a discussion of what is covered by the term “AI”, we describe the different functionalities and the envisaged or potential uses of these systems in work situations. Drawing on ergonomics literature, we show that these systems carry old issues that have been updated. Then, we present the questions of design and introduction of AI in work situations by underlining the important role of activity analysis to imagine and design human(s)–AI(s) systems in an organizational framework.

6.1. Introduction

For the last five years, the discourse on Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been omnipresent in the political and socio-economic fields. This phenomenon is notably linked to technological advances in AI in the field of machine learning, and has advanced due to the increase in machine power and the generation and availability of Big Data. According to many authors, the “new” AI systems are so powerful that it is now possible to automate an increasingly large number of tasks. Two perspectives therefore emerge: (1) the first is “optimistic” insofar as it emphasizes the (potential) benefits that AI would bring to workers and companies. For example, it involves using AI to “free humans” ...