How Artificial Intelligence is Reshaping Work and Professions: The Case of Doctors and Medical Trainees in the Greater Bay Area

How is artificial intelligence (AI) reshaping work and professions? Machine learning algorithms have led to organizations embracing data in new ways (Kellogg, Valentine, & Christin, 2020). Organizations are quickly adopting technologies and developing AI tools for uses ranging from medical imaging to predictive policing (Lebovitz, Levina, & Lifshitz-Assaf, 2021; Waardenburg, Huysman, & Sergeeva, 2022). AI tools, developed using machine learning algorithms, are trained by experts (Pine & Bossen, 2021) who label and input data to recognize patterns (Faraj, Pachidi, & Sayegh, 2018).Scholars of work and professions have often centered studies around the use of technologies in the workplace (e.g., Anthony, 2021; Beane, 2019; Bechky, 2003; Orlikowski, 2000). Important contributions have examined how new technologies introduced into a workplace change how members of professional groups learn (Anthony, 2021; Beane, 2019; Edmondson, Bohmer, & Pisano, 2001; Kellogg, Myers, Gainer, & Singer, 2021), and relate to one another (Barley, 1986; 2015; Croidieu & Kim, 2018; Kellogg, 2022; Leonardi, 2007; Nelson and Irwin, 2014; Schultze & Orlikowski, 2004). These studies illustrate the importance of studying the situated use of new technologies, such as AI, where changes in work practices, roles, and relations occur on the ground (Barley & Beane, 2020). Despite scholars theorizing that AI will have an outsized influence on the future of work and professions (Bailey & Barley, 2020; Faraj, Pachidi, & Sayegh, 2018; Glaser, Pollock, & D’Adderio, 2021), there has been little empirical work to examine the situated use of AI in organizations (Bailey, Faraj, Hinds, Leonardi, & von Krogh, 2022). Studying AI use in the work place and how it is changing the way professionals work and relate to one another is an opportunity to unpack the black box of algorithms (Christin, 2020), with implications for understanding how the future ofwork is evolving.To contribute to this new stream of research on how AI is changing work and professions, I will conduct an ethnographic study of a hospital in the Greater Bay Area (GBA) to observe departments before, during, and after the implementation of medical AI tools.