Shaping the transition : Artificial intelligence and social dialogue

Rapid advances in the development and adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies provide new opportunities but also raise fears about disruptive labour market and workplace transitions. This working paper examines how social dialogue can shape the AI transition in beneficial ways for both workers and firms. It highlights that social dialogue can generally help foster inclusive labour markets and ease technological transitions, and presents new descriptive evidence together with ongoing initiatives from social partners showing that social dialogue has an important role to play in the AI transition as well. The paper also discusses how AI adoption may affect social dialogue itself, e.g. by adding new pressures on weakening labour relations systems and posing practical challenges to social partners, such as insufficient AI-related expertise and resources to respond to the AI transition. Based on these insights, the paper suggests a few measures for policy makers who would like to support social partners’ efforts in shaping the AI transition.