MOTIVATION

AI and robotics are likely to be most powerful means for radical improvement of working conditions in diverse domains such as industry, logistics, healthcare, construction, agriculture, education

etc. AI and robots can support human operators in diverse tasks starting from difficult and tedious manual labour tasks up to complex decision – making tasks. The vision of the AI4Work project is to improve communication and collaboration between humans, AI and robots, allowing for an improvement of the working conditions within different processes in organisations in several domains in terms of increased efficiency of work, reduction in stress upon employees, increased confidence in decision-making process etc.

AI4Work intends to investigate practical methods and tools for optimal sharing of work between humans and Ai/robots. Due to the high level of uncertainty in modern organisations (in industry but also in healthcare, education, agriculture) an appropriate balance between human and machine activities (e.g., decision making must be found. The key assumption is that to cope with the required flexibility and dynamics, Sliding Work Sharing (SWS), where this balance varies during the operation depending on the situational context, machine-based confidence levels and human interactions, is likely to be the most appropriate for the modern organisations.

One of the key challenges in AI-supported working is an “appropriate interpretation of a context guiding machine or human to better understand the proposed support/recommendations/decisions”. Due to the required high dynamics and flexibility in modern organisations, the context, under which work is carried out, changes rapidly. It is, therefore, important to identify on-line the current context and adapt AI/robots support based on it, and, at the same time, help

operators understand the action taken or decision proposed by AI/robots. It is expected that this would lead to changes in attitudes towards AI-and robot-supported work in diverse organisations.