Same Threat, Different Futures: Diverse Professional Responses to Anticipated AI Encroachment

• In Event: AI and the Value of Work

Abstract

Professionals currently face a moment of deep uncertainty as they anticipate the incursion of artificial intelligence (AI) into their fields. Research on professional jurisdictions suggests that professionals employ varied strategies to defend the specialized “core” analytical work that legitimizes their authority. However, within a profession, individual experts might not necessarily find the same meaning in specialized analytic work. As they reimagine the future of work, which tasks do they hope AI will take over for them and which do they hope to continue to do themselves? Through 72 in-depth interviews with physicians, we find that doctors diverged in what they sought to protect—specialized analytical work versus healthcare provision—and how they sought to protect it—through personal execution versus oversight of technology. These dimensions produced four orientations: Augmentation (personally performing analytical work, with AI enhancing execution), Verification (ceding execution but overseeing AI's analytical outputs), Connection (delegating analytical tasks to personally deliver relational care), and Dissemination (overseeing AI's autonomous performance of analytical work to deliver care to broader populations). This variation was systematically associated with professional socialization and structural position: women physicians showed stronger preferences for execution while men gravitated toward oversight; US-trained physicians prioritized analytical control while internationally trained graduates embraced healthcare provision orientations. These findings reveal that because professionals vary in what they find meaningful, they hold different visions of how to protect the profession from technological encroachment. Because these preferences map onto existing hierarchies—with higher-status groups gravitating toward oversight—AI adoption could either reinforce current inequalities if oversight of analytical work becomes the new basis for professional status or disrupt them if connective labor becomes recognized as the profession's distinctive human contribution.

Authors

• Farnam Mohebi, University of California, Berkeley

• Ambar La Forgia

• Eliza Brown, University of California, Berkeley