Events

Mr. Bryan Spencer
Ph.D. Candidate in Management (Strategy & Organization)
Frankfurt School of Finance & Management

We know little about how artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping work and professions. Organizational scholars studying how technologies change work and professions often focus on the use of technologies in the workplace. However, AI’s influence begins with development prior to use. Existing research elides the complexities of how the development of AI is influencing work and professions. In a 13-month ethnographic field study of an elite teaching hospital in China, “Southern Eye Hospital,” I study how AI development led medical trainees to make claims to tasks and authority that they did not normally possess in order to complete their projects, a move that was at odds with the traditional hierarchy of the hospital. I examine how trainees managed the observability of their interactions as they worked with patients in a carefully scripted way meant to evade detection by senior doctors. These performances, which I call “scripted secondments,” reconceptualize jurisdictional change as temporary, covert claims to tasks that enable trainees to accomplish their goals without causing conflict with senior doctors. By examining how change unfolds within the hierarchy of a profession, I contribute to an understanding of relationality in jurisdictional change and unpack the “black box” of the human side of AI development.