AI for Just Work: Constructing Diverse Imaginations of AI beyond"Replacing Humans"

2025-03-10

AI Summary

Contemporary AI discourse is overly preoccupied with human replacement and efficiency gains, resulting in a narrow, ethically impoverished vision of AI. Method: The authors introduce “AI imagination” as a novel conceptual framework that foregrounds ethical premises in the early stages of AI visioning, shifting from technocentrism toward a value-sensitive paradigm. Their approach integrates interdisciplinary speculation, Value Sensitive Design (VSD), and case-driven imaginative construction, exemplified by the “just labor” paradigm applied to fairness-constrained medical image synthesis. Contribution/Results: They propose a reusable methodology—“AI for just work”—demonstrated through an ethics-enhanced technical prototype; further, they catalyze global AI communities to engage in public reflection and collective action on the normative purposes of AI development.

Technology Category

• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Morality & Value-based AI
• Humans and AI: Learning Human Values and Preferences
• Machine Learning: Ethics, Bias, and Fairness

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness and ethical considerations in crowd work and in human-in-the-loop AI systems
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization

Abstract

The AI community usually focuses on"how"to develop AI techniques, but lacks thorough open discussions on"why"we develop AI. Lacking critical reflections on the general visions and purposes of AI may make the community vulnerable to manipulation. In this position paper, we explore the"why"question of AI. We denote answers to the"why"question the imaginations of AI, which depict our general visions, frames, and mindsets for the prospects of AI. We identify that the prevailing vision in the AI community is largely a monoculture that emphasizes objectives such as replacing humans and improving productivity. Our critical examination of this mainstream imagination highlights its underpinning and potentially unjust assumptions. We then call to diversify our collective imaginations of AI, embedding ethical assumptions from the outset in the imaginations of AI. To facilitate the community's pursuit of diverse imaginations, we demonstrate one process for constructing a new imagination of"AI for just work,"and showcase its application in the medical image synthesis task to make it more ethical. We hope this work will help the AI community to open dialogues with civil society on the visions and purposes of AI, and inspire more technical works and advocacy in pursuit of diverse and ethical imaginations to restore the value of AI for the public good.

Problem

• Lack of critical reflection on AI's purpose and visions.
• Dominance of monoculture vision emphasizing human replacement.
• Need for diverse, ethical AI imaginations for public good.

Innovation

• Diversifying AI imaginations beyond human replacement
• Embedding ethical assumptions in AI development
• Applying ethical AI in medical image synthesis