Pro-worker technologies, including artificial intelligence, refer to technologies that expand human capabilities and increase the market value of worker expertise. The term is the subject of a NBER paper, ‘Building Pro-Worker Artificial Intelligence’.

Key aspects of this concept:

•  Technology is pro-worker if it makes human skills more useful rather than less necessary.
•  "New task-creating" tools are pro-worker because they generate demand for novel human expertise.
• AI is most effective as a collaborator that handles unstructured data to support high-stakes human decision-making.
• Misaligned incentives and a "pro-automation ideology" are leading the private market to underinvest in collaborative, pro-worker tools.
• Several policy shifts (e.g., tax code reform, anti-trust enforcement, intellectual property protections for worker expertise, and targeted investments in health care and education) are redirecting AI development.

The paper’s view is that AI’s potential to serve as a collaborator by extending human judgment, enabling new tasks, and accelerating skill acquisition, is transformative and currently underexploited.