How is Work Changing with AI? An interdisciplinary appraisal and new evidence of “bypassing practices” at work
Join the Work and Equalities Institute (WEI) for its 2026 Annual Lecture with Professor Damian Grimshaw, exploring how AI is changing work and what this means for workers, organisations and the future of good jobs.
About the lecture
Professor Damian Grimshaw will set out four theoretical framings of how work is changing with AI and apply these interdisciplinary insights to understand what is happening to work in the UK video games industry.
Each framing focuses on particular change mechanisms. The “market shift” framing (economics) asks whether AI is automating or augmenting work as a result of changing relative prices of production inputs (technology and job tasks). The "control shift” (labour process) asks how employers use AI to shape control over work, routinising and fracturing jobs, in an institutional and inter-organisational (including value chain) context that shapes prospects for worker resistance. The “imbrication” framing (sociology of professions) asks how work roles, relations and status change with AI when occupations renegotiate the social order over time in specific settings. And the “recombination” framing (innovation studies) asks how an increasingly powerful AI industry is challenging work in incumbent organisations by establishing AI dependence and capturing value.
These insights have helped Damian and colleagues think about new data collected from the UK video games industry, where they have identified a new category of change mechanisms, which they call “bypassing practices”. Workers are using AI in ways that overlap and/or exclude workers from other technical groups. Workers also face prescriptive control when work is fragmented across subcontracting chains, diminishing decision-making autonomy. Moreover, work is being displaced and transferred to AI specialist firms. These firms are capturing value (via sales of innovative AI tools) and upending job and earnings prospects.
This multi-layered set of “bypassing practices” highlights the need for a wide-ranging agenda for responsive policy and practice to shore up good jobs in the face of AI implementation. It should involve unions, professional associations, employers and government, and link employment and industrial policy objectives.
The lecture draws on joint work with Marcela Miozzo (King’s College London) and Lourdes Sosa (LSE).
Lecture and reception
The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception from 16:30–17:00, offering an opportunity to continue the conversation and connect with colleagues.
Please register your attendance via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-is-work-changing-with-ai-with-damian-grimshaw-tickets-2004029169192?aff=oddtdtcreator
