The recent new wave of AI tools has been a wake-up call for many, making people marvel at the massive advances the technology has made and its potential to contribute across all domains of work, innovation, productivity and skills. But there are worries about the disruptions it will bring and the risks – even existential ones – that it can pose to society. In this session, after opening remarks from the OECD and Germany’s Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, Professor Stuart Russell will present the latest developments in AI, what they mean for humans and what needs to be done to make AI beneficial for humanity.

In this session, OpenAI will give a short demo of what GPT-4 is able to do.

AI chatbots has been front and centre in the news for past couple of months. They can quickly and cheaply produce well written essays, answer costumer support questions, and even pass exams. But AI chatbots can also incorrectly answer basic questions or generate hate speech and misinformation. This session will start with a keynote speech from Professor Ajay Agrawal on the implications of AI chatbots for job automation, work and productivity. To understand the policy implications and promote the adoption of trustworthy AI, Stephanie Ifayemi (Partnership on AI) will moderate a panel discussion with: • Emilija Stojmenova Duh (Minister of Digital Transformation, Slovenia); • Lucilla Sioli (Director for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Industry, European Commission); • Zoë Baird (Senior Counsellor to Secretary Gina Raimondo, U.S. Department of Commerce).

What actually happens in businesses and to workers when AI is introduced to the workplace? Stefano Scarpetta (Director of the Employment, Labour and Social Affairs Directorate, OECD) will present new OECD work, based on a survey of over 7,000 employers and workers and over 100 in-depth case studies. Businesses and workers will then share their own experiences of AI adoption while policymakers will discuss the measures they are taking to adapt. The impact of AI on the workplace: Main findings from the OECD AI surveys of employers and workers The impact of AI on the workplace: Evidence from OECD case studies of AI implementation

AI brings benefits but also real risks like bias and discrimination, the polarisation of opinions, privacy infringement, and widespread surveillance in some countries. Some of these risks are already materialising. Around the world, governments and AI actors have been converging around the use of risk-based approaches and impact assessments to help govern AI. But the frameworks and standards developed by different actors will need to interoperate as much as possible. Otherwise, achieving trustworthy AI will be not only more complex and costly, but also less effective and enforceable. The session will also present the Catalogue of AI Tools and Metrics a one-stop shop for AI actors to share and find approaches, mechanisms, and practices to prevent and mitigate risks and implement trustworthy AI.

Stephanie Ifayemi, Head of Policy with Partnership on AI and conference moderator, summarises day one of the conference and tells us what’s in store for day two.

The OECD will launch the new report “Is Education Losing the Race with Technology? AI's Progress in Maths and Reading” and present unpublished results for ChatGPT on the PISA assessment of 15-year-olds. The results raise the prospect of AI soon reproducing the kinds of capabilities that are used to measure the success of our education systems and illustrate our goals for education. The panel will discuss how we should think about our goals for education as AI becomes increasingly powerful.

Although developments in AI have been surging, the adoption of AI technologies is still limited in many firms, and the impact on productivity is often unclear. The session will then move into a panel discussion where leading academics and members of institutions supporting AI diffusion will discuss recent evidence, challenges and opportunities for the diffusion of AI across firms. They will discuss the role of skills and other assets complementary to AI, the relationship between use of AI and productivity, the challenges firms face when trying to adopt AI, and the role of public policy in fostering the diffusion of AI. The session will start with a 30-minute informal fireside chat with Ödgärd Andersson and Robert Seamans, which will be followed by a 1-hour panel discussion on recent evidence, challenges and opportunities for the diffusion of AI across firms.

The road to work remains fraught with difficulties for people with disabilities. If left unchecked, AI could further reduce opportunities to work for example through non-accessible innovations or biased algorithms. At the same time AI can be part of the solution, removing some of the barriers to employment faced by people with disabilities, notably through AI-powered assistive devices, as well as AI-backed solutions improving the accessibility of mainstream systems (e.g. job boards) . In this session, experts on accessibility for people with disabilities, AI innovators and policy makers will discuss how to make the best of AI to help people with disabilities access the labour market.

Stephanie Ifayemi, Head of Policy with Partnership on AI and conference moderator, summarises day two of the conference and tells us what’s in store for day three.

This session will gather two OECD Ambassadors representing Canada, Madeleine Chenette, and Germany, Michaela Spaeth, as well as the OECD Deputy Secretary-General Ulrik Knudsen, to share their perspectives on the OECD’s work on Artificial Intelligence – including how it helps advance Members’ key priorities at the national level and how they see the OECD best contributing to better policies for human centric and trustworthy AI going forward.

Employers worldwide and across several sectors are reporting difficulties in finding and hiring the employees with the right skills, with losses of productivity and competitiveness. Many employers are now looking at AI to address these skill shortages. This session will engage AI experts, employers, union representatives and technology developers to discuss the extent to which AI can be leveraged to automate tasks, and functions, improve hiring processes and predicting skill needs.

As AI makes its way in the workplace, clear accountability is needed to ensure that AI actors know who is responsible for preventing AI from causing harm to workers in terms of physical health and safety, well-being and fundamental rights. Accountability is also essential to make redress possible if AI has an adverse impact on workers or job seekers. To date, it is still not always clear which actor linked to the AI system is responsible if something goes wrong. In this session, Sandra Wachter and Yordanka Ivanova will discuss how existing and draft legislation –such as the GDPR and the EU AI Act – address accountability for AI systems used in the workplace.

AI is progressively spreading in all economic sectors and in many aspects of daily life. To facilitate AI adoption, many countries have launched National AI strategies that make AI a priority in terms of research, the economy, the modernisation of public action, regulation and ethics. The France Strategy for Artificial Intelligence was introduced in 2018 with a focus on fostering AI talent, disseminating AI and data in the economy and promoting a balanced ethical model between innovation and protection of fundamental rights. In this fireside chat, the OECD Director for Employment and Labour and Social Affairs Stefano Scarpetta and the Director General of the Directorate General for Enterprises in France Thomas Courbe will discuss what governments can do to support the adoption of AI at work.

The capabilities of AI increase every year, as do its applications. AI promises to help solve global challenges like climate change and access to quality medical care. This session will discuss how future AI systems can be expected to evolve in the medium and long term - including the possible advent of Artificial General Intelligence – and the potential implications to our economies and societies. Speakers will also reflect on how policymakers can use foresight to anticipate new trends and keep up with technological developments.

In this session, the authors of the new OECD reports on the Impact of Ai on the Workplace will discuss their research and the main findings of the surveys and case studies. The session will also offer an opportunity for Q&A with the public.

To grow the community of experts around the OECD programme on AI in Work, Innovation, Productivity, and Skills (AI-WIPS) we opened a call for speakers to present their recent research on the impact of AI on work, innovation, productivity and skills at the Conference. The speakers in this session were selected through that call and were invited to present their work.

Digitalisation is a major opportunity for public - and private - employment services (PES) to reach out to large numbers of jobseekers, workers and employers with diverse needs, and provide effective and efficient services. This session will present several innovative cutting edge use cases of AI in public employment services, highlighting the opportunities AI represents and discussing some of its challenges.