Call the Philosophers
Introduction
We have a complicated relationship with work. It may be more accurate to say we have complicated relationships with work because there are so many of them - and sometimes they compete. There exists unspoken but widely accepted assumptions about work in the global North: what constitutes good work, what it means to not have any, what value we place on it, and so on. It's sometimes perceived as a way to move up a socio-economic ladder, other times it’s a path to self-development, or an authorizing force that permits leisure time. It even functions as the path to which one may find their purpose and self-actualisation. Or so we’re told.
That’s a lot of complicated relationships. With our identity, sense of purpose, and measures of dignity wrapped up in work, what will happen as AI technologies continue to shape it in new and unpredictable ways? And how can we participate in ways that are generative of desirable relationships, rather than reactive or complacent?
I would argue we need to hire more philosophers.
Before I get to that, let’s consider our complicated relationships with work as a one-stop-shop for our sense-of-self needs.
Identity
How does your work shaped your identity? When you meet someone and tell them what you do, how does that also inform your own understanding and acceptable presentation of self? How does it interact with your understanding of gender performance? If you’re a woman, do you work in a role that overtly demonstrates care? If you’re a man, does your role provide some demonstration of authority? Does that soothe you?
By asking these simple questions, identity becomes another layered and complex construct. Separate from our work-selves, identity functions as a type of framework through which we come to interpret and understand our experiences. Identity is related to self-worth, and so it's unsurprising to find studies that suggest we attach an amount of positive value to our identities (Hogg & Terry, 2000). Given how much time we devote to work, it's also unsurprising to read studies proposing that there appears to be a dynamic interaction between identity and work environments, and that the two influence each other (Miscenko & Day, 2015).
If our identities are tied so tightly to our work, and the relationship is reciprocal - what happens when our work changes significantly, or disappears? As decision-makers shift to adapt more AI options into their organisations, the questions about impact ought to factor in this perspective for a more accurate cost-benefit analysis.
Meaningful Work
Meaningful work doesn’t have a specifically agreed upon definition across the various disciplines studying its impact. Generally speaking, however, it’s accepted that meaningfulness captures how individuals tend to evaluate the significance and value of their work (Blustein, Lysova, & Duffy, 2023). Sometimes it’s easy to see the significance and value in one’s work, but as industries and roles evolve that has the potential to become increasingly opaque.
In some ways, the contemporary design of organisations has put an uncomfortable amount of space between individual employees and that which they produce. The space is uncomfortable for reasons such as:
individual contributions are harder to measure (or reward, or manage) by the organisation; this also causes the tools of measure to lose the power of incentive
the organisation cannot see individual contribution, nor the employees themselves
The outcomes in both cases will have a negative impact on the employees’ ability to identify meaning and purpose in their individual contribution, (Ashraf, Bandiera, Minni, & Zingales, 2025). From the measurement perspective, meaningful effort ought to be rewarded with things like pay increases, promotions, increased responsibility, or stature. From the ‘being seen’ perspective, meaningful effort ought to result in connectedness, validation, and being accepted.
Increased distance as a result of more automation and separation by replacing human effort with AI solutions has the unfortunate potential to increase feelings of meaningless work.
Dignity
Perhaps one of the more strange relationships we have with our work is in finding it to be a source of dignity. In a certain sense, employees have to hand over an amount of autonomy, equality, and sense of freedom by engaging in labour. After all, someone else tells you when to do your work, how to do it, what isn’t good enough, etc. However, it may be as a result of one’s effort that the exchange seems acceptable. That is, if you perceive your work to be meaningful and to align positively with your sense of identity in some way, then that effort has value. Given the broad definition of dignity as the sense of worth and respect deserved by all people, it becomes clearer how one’s work activity could nurture it.
In organisational psychology literature, dignity at work refers to workplace experiences - how we’re perceived and valued as people in the workplace. Dignity in work, however, is linked to the idea of 'good work' or meaningful work (Blustein & Allan, 2024). In addition to the more general relationships between work and our sense of dignity, researchers have also developed a measure called the Workplace Dignity Scale. It’s designed to support predictive relationships between workplace characteristics and dignity. While testing and developing the measures for the scale, researchers observed workplace dignity while accounting for difference in things like employee engagement, burnout, and turnover intentions that were beyond the explanatory effects of organisational respect and meaningful work (Thomas & Lucas, 2019). This observation suggests that dignity has its own unique function in how we feel about our work.
Reading one of the 18 statements on the Workplace Dignity Scale which states, “I am treated as less valuable than objects or pieces of equipment,” one wonders how employees will experience work in which they feel less valuable than new technologies.
How will philosophy help?
Rather than looking into the near future with a feeling of doom, let’s consider how to engage in ways that are generative of our desired shape(s) of work.
I’ve been pleased to see an uptick recently in public appetite and appreciation for philosophy. Particularly in new media spaces like youtube and on podcasts, we can see PhD graduates in philosophy finding an audience to engage with over big questions that spring up around societal shifts and revolutions. Just as the Industrial Revolution set off a renewal of philosophical interest in and critique of work (Cholbi, 2023), this point in history seems set to rhyme. After all, who shall we call when massive societal shifts begin to lead to feelings of deep unease and anxiety about fundamental aspects of life - like identity and meaning? Who shall we call when work production shifts, and quality and standards slip? When a generation of entry-level employees is replaced by an AI solution (WEF, 2025)?
We shall call those who can help us ask good questions - big questions like: What is knowledge? How do we ascribe value? What is virtuous? What constitutes beauty? How do we make aesthetic judgments?
When we need help shaping these types of questions, we must call the philosophers.
Final thoughts
As we move through this current industrial shift as a result of AI, there isn’t only one way to navigate uncharted territory. In a recenttalk, Lila Ibrahim (Chief Operating Officer of Google DeepMind) highlighted the importance of interdisciplinary teams during the early stages of research as a way to build in values like responsibility to users. In the noise of AI from the tech company side, it was refreshing to see such clarity and lack of equivocation. One hopes that clarity remains, but equally that we hold decision-makers to account with a similar clarity. Whether it’s at the organisational or the societal level, be clear in what it is you desire in our future work.
As the development of new technologies shifts, interdisciplinary teams are required - ones where social scientists, artists, and philosophers are sitting next to technical experts. For those of us adapting (rather than producing) these technologies, let us include some of the questions from earlier. Are we contributing to the evolution of work that is meaningful, has dignity, and exists in a shape we’re content to share our identity with? What does that look like?
Works Cited
Ashraf, N., Bandiera, O., Minni, V., & Zingales, L. (2025).Meaning at work (Working Paper No. 2025–67). University of Chicago. https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/BFI_WP_2025-67.pdf
Blustein, D. L., & Allan, B. A. (2024). Dignity at Work: a critical conceptual framework and research agenda. Journal of Career Assessment. https://doi.org/10.1177/10690727241283685
Blustein, D. L., Lysova, E. I., & Duffy, R. D. (2022). Understanding decent work and meaningful work. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 10(1), 289–314. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-031921-024847
Bohstedt, J. (1983). Riots and community politics in England and Wales, 1790–1810. In Harvard University Press eBooks. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674733251
Cholbi, M. (2023). Philosophical Approaches to Work and Labor, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2023/entries/work-labor/>
Hogg, M. A., & Terry, D. J. (2000). Social Identity and Self-Categorization Processes in Organizational contexts. Academy of Management Review, 25(1), 121. https://doi.org/10.2307/259266
Miscenko, D., & Day, D. V. (2015). Identity and identification at work. Organizational Psychology Review, 6(3), 215–247. https://doi.org/10.1177/2041386615584009
Thomas, B., & Lucas, K. (2018). Development and validation of the workplace dignity scale. Group & Organization Management, 44(1), 72–111. https://doi.org/10.1177/1059601118807784
World Economic Forum. (2025). The Future of Jobs Report. (ISBN 978-2-940631-90-2). https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-ofjobs-report-2025/
Illustration by Hanin Abouzeid on Unsplash