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  "description": "AI drives growth and efficiency, but also reshapes rights, rules, and daily work. A look at the double effect of AI on organisations and labour law.",
  "path": "/ais-impact-on-work-people-and-labour-law/",
  "publishedAt": "2025-09-17T13:37:47.000Z",
  "site": "https://hoeijmakers.net",
  "tags": [
    "the thermostat effect",
    "costs of AI agents compared to human staff",
    "The Thermostat Effect: Why AI Feels Distant but Works DeepThe dial’s been turned—but the room is only just starting to warm up. On Schmuki, ROI and Azhar’s $100T puzzle.Rob HoeijmakersRob Hoeijmakers",
    "SDU’s GenIA-L",
    "Uncover",
    "💡 The $100 trillion productivity puzzle",
    "What Does an AI Agent Cost Compared to a Human?",
    "Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence",
    "Learning to Work with the EU AI Act"
  ],
  "textContent": "AI enters organisations with familiar promises: more growth, greater efficiency. Yet the moment these systems touch work, a second effect emerges. The work itself changes, and so do the rules, rights, and responsibilities around it. What begins as a technical or strategic decision quickly turns into a legal and human question.\n\n### Quick takeaways\n\n\n  * AI applications in organisations often pursue **growth** (more clients, new markets) or **efficiency** (doing the same with fewer people).\n  * These shifts have **direct effects** on employees and their daily work.\n  * They also trigger **indirect effects** : new legal, ethical, and organisational questions (privacy, discrimination, works councils, contracts).\n  * For strategists, builders, and managers, it pays to understand the **labour law context** early on.\n\n\n\n## A web of change\n\nIn earlier essays I explored the thermostat effect (AI changing the ‘temperature’ of work) and the relative costs of AI agents compared to human staff. Both point to the same underlying reality: AI is not neutral. It pushes processes, costs, and expectations in new directions.\n\nIn recent conversations with labour lawyers and workplace advisors, I heard repeatedly how double this effect can be. One of them described the shift very plainly:  _“AI doesn’t just change what the client does, it changes what we as lawyers have to do.”_\n\nOrganisations adopt AI in recruitment, workflows, or compliance. At the same time, their legal advisers must think about how these tools alter contracts, equal treatment, or works council rights, while also experimenting with AI in their own practice.\n\nThe Thermostat Effect: Why AI Feels Distant but Works DeepThe dial’s been turned—but the room is only just starting to warm up. On Schmuki, ROI and Azhar’s $100T puzzle.Rob HoeijmakersRob Hoeijmakers\n\n## Growth, efficiency and their shadow\n\nFor many organisations the starting point is straightforward. AI can be used to grow: reaching more clients, operating across languages and channels, scaling services at low cost. Or it can be used to become more efficient: automating processes, reducing repetitive work, cutting costs.\n\nBoth logics are valid, but each brings a **shadow side**. Growth means managing more interactions, data, and responsibilities. Efficiency means facing the reality that some jobs will change or disappear. That is where legal questions surface. Employers must consider privacy and fairness. Employees wonder about job security, surveillance, and rights.\n\n## The role of law in a shifting landscape\n\nWhat struck me in these conversations is that legal professionals are not outside this shift. They, too, experience AI as both a tool and a subject of concern. As one adviser put it:  _“Our clients expect answers about fairness, but we’re also learning how to use these systems ourselves.”_\n\nNew AI-driven legal research tools are powerful, but also limited by access to data. And while these tools promise efficiency, they can also narrow thinking, leaving less space for the creativity that good legal advice requires.\n\nIn practice, lawyers and labour specialists must constantly ask: when does an AI-powered process become a matter of employee rights? How do you advise a works council facing automation? What happens when an AI system quietly shifts working conditions without consultation?\n\n💡\n\nBeyond the broader effects of AI on work, there are also concrete applications within the legal field. SDU’s GenIA-L (Gen AI for Fiscal and Legal Research) combines large language models with curated legal databases. It helps lawyers search and interpret case law and legislation more quickly, while grounding answers in annotated and peer-reviewed materials that are not freely available online.\n\nUncover takes another angle, using AI to analyse large volumes of cases and dossiers to reveal hidden patterns. Together, they illustrate how AI and data curation not only affect clients’ workplaces, but also the practice of law itself.\n\n## A personal reflection\n\nFor me as an AI strategist and builder, these insights are not abstract. They inform the work I do with clients. Some AI projects are clearly about **growth** , expanding reach, scaling across markets. Others are about **efficiency** , reducing complexity, cutting costs. Both carry consequences for the people whose work is reshaped.\n\nUnderstanding the legal dimension helps me advise more responsibly. It ensures that efficiency does not silently become erosion of rights, and that growth does not outpace the frameworks that protect fairness and transparency.\n\n## Closing thought\n\nThis article is not a conclusion but a **field note from exploration**. The double effect of AI, on organisations and on the legal frameworks that surround them, creates a web of change. Seeing that web clearly is the first step.\n\nFor organisations, for lawyers, and for strategists like myself, the task is to navigate it with awareness. The law may follow technology, but it also shapes the path along which technology becomes part of our work.\n\n### Further reading\n\n  * 💡 The $100 trillion productivity puzzle\n  * What Does an AI Agent Cost Compared to a Human?\n  * Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence\n  * Learning to Work with the EU AI Act\n\n",
  "title": "AI’s Impact on Work, People, and Labour Law",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-10T08:53:51.823Z"
}