The Unexpected Value of Tedium: How Automation of Routine Expert Work Disrupts Professional-Client Identification in Medicine

• In Event: 20806 - Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace (Co-sponsored by Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work)

Abstract

Tedious and routine technical work, often viewed as detrimental to professional practice, actually serves as a crucial mechanism for professional-client identification, enabling practitioners to internalize client perspectives into their professional self-concept. This paper challenges prevailing theories that frame tedious professional tasks as impediments to professionalism. Drawing on six months of ethnographic fieldwork in radiation oncology departments implementing AI automation for treatment planning and 15 semi-structured interviews, I demonstrate how labor-intensive, repetitive work fosters deep client identification for physicians through three mechanisms: pattern recognition, tacit knowledge building, and shared mental models.
Through manual contouring—a meticulous process of tracing anatomical structures in medical imaging—oncologists develop technical immersion and patient embodiment, professional investment in outcomes, and responsibility built on patient trust. These processes create a cognitive and emotional bridge transforming abstract client information into embodied professional knowledge.
The introduction of AI automation redistributes practitioners' cognitive attention away from hands-on technical work toward supervision, fundamentally altering client identification patterns. This shift creates tensions between efficiency and the deep embodied understanding traditionally characterizing professional-client relationships.
This study illuminates a paradox in professional work: tedious technical activities simultaneously enable and challenge client identification. While organizations increasingly seek to streamline or automate routine work, my findings suggest these very routines create conditions necessary for deep client identification.
These insights have significant implications for professional work design in an era of technological advancement, suggesting organizations must carefully consider how automation might affect professionals' capacity for client identification—a critical yet often overlooked foundation of effective professional practice.

Author

• Farnam Mohebi, University of California, Berkeley