Experimental Evidence That AI-Managed Workers Tolerate Lower Pay Without Demotivation

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2505.21752v1
• Date: Tue, 27 May 2025 20:40:18 GMT
• Title: Experimental Evidence That AI-Managed Workers Tolerate Lower Pay Without Demotivation
• Authors: Mengchen Dong, Levin Brinkmann, Omar Sherif, Shihan Wang, Xinyu Zhang, Jean-François Bonnefon, Iyad Rahwan,
• Abstract summary: Experimental evidence on worker responses to AI management remains mixed, partly due to limitations in experimental fidelity.<n>We address these limitations with a customized workplace in the Minecraft platform, enabling high-resolution behavioral tracking of autonomous task execution.<n>Workers completed repeated production tasks under either human, AI, or hybrid management.<n>An AI manager trained on human-defined evaluation principles systematically assigned lower performance ratings and reduced wages by 40%, without adverse effects on worker motivation and sense of fairness.
• Score: 7.306174397662034
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Experimental evidence on worker responses to AI management remains mixed, partly due to limitations in experimental fidelity. We address these limitations with a customized workplace in the Minecraft platform, enabling high-resolution behavioral tracking of autonomous task execution, and ensuring that participants approach the task with well-formed expectations about their own competence. Workers (N = 382) completed repeated production tasks under either human, AI, or hybrid management. An AI manager trained on human-defined evaluation principles systematically assigned lower performance ratings and reduced wages by 40\%, without adverse effects on worker motivation and sense of fairness. These effects were driven by a muted emotional response to AI evaluation, compared to evaluation by a human. The very features that make AI appear impartial may also facilitate silent exploitation, by suppressing the social reactions that normally constrain extractive practices in human-managed work.

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