Future of Work with AI Agents – Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential across the U.S. Workforce

70 million U.S. workers are about to face their biggest workplace transition due to AI agents, but their voices are too often missing. We address this gap by conducting a nationwide audit to understand what workers want AI agents to automate or augment, and how those desires align with the current technological capabilities. Data from 1,500 workers across 104 occupations leads to three main findings:

• 1. Desire-capability landscape of AI agents at work reveals critical mismatches of current AI agent research and investment. 41.0% of Y Combinator company-task mappings are concentrated in the Low Priority Zone and Automation “Red Light” Zone.
• 2. Many occupational tasks see a need of human-agent collaboration with equal partnership. However, workers generally prefer higher levels of human agency, potentially foreshadowing friction as AI capabilities advance.
• 3. Suppose AI agents start to enter the workforce, key human competencies may be shifting from information-processing skills to interpersonal and organizational skills.

Yijia Shao, Humishka Zope, Yucheng Jiang, Jiaxin Pei, David Nguyen, Erik Brynjolfsson, Diyi Yang

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(Many thanks to Evan T. for sharing)