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UC Berkeley labor researcher Mishal Khan warned at the Association of Health Care Journalists Fall Summit that workplace AI can worsen conditions for healthcare workers, even without eliminating jobs. She cited risks including loss of skills, reduced autonomy, worker surveillance and algorithmically managed shifts; the scale of these effects in healthcare remains uncertain.
AI systems used in healthcare workplaces could affect staff through surveillance, automated task assignment and loss of professional skills, UC Berkeley labor researcher Mishal Khan warned at the Association of Health Care Journalists Fall Summit in Los Angeles. She said these risks can arise even when no worker loses a job to AI, putting working conditions and patient-care relationships at stake.
Khan, a senior researcher with the Technology and Work Program at the UC Berkeley Labor Center, described three broad workplace uses of AI: electronic monitoring, algorithmic management and automating parts of a job. In healthcare and other industries, monitoring may track workers; management software may analyze conversations and coach staff on how to respond; automation may take over selected tasks.
In her study of AI’s potential effects on healthcare, Khan identified de-skilling as a particular concern. If automated tools perform tasks that require specialized judgment, workers may lose practice and confidence, potentially affecting their scope of practice. Stanford biomedical informatics professor Tina Hernandez-Boussard described medical residents who, during a hospital placement in Uganda, faced a loss of electricity and had no AI tool available to read electrocardiograms. She said the residents were not confident synthesizing the information to make recommendations.
Khan also raised questions about automated patient handoffs, which workers fear could weaken relationships with patients, and ambient scribes that record or process information. She said staff want to know what data these systems collect about them and whether it could later inform employment decisions. A further concern is responsibility when a clinical error follows an AI recommendation: who is accountable remains an open question.
AI Could Reshape Care Work
The concerns extend beyond whether AI directly replaces jobs. Khan’s account points to changes in how work is monitored, allocated and evaluated, with possible consequences for pay, autonomy and the skills workers use. She listed potential harms including job loss, theft of work product, lower wages, work speed-up and injuries, discrimination, suppression of labor organizing, and loss of control. These are risks she identified, not findings that every AI system produces those outcomes.
For patients, the stakes include the quality of clinical judgment and continuity of care. If staff rely on tools for tasks they rarely perform without them, a power outage or system failure may expose gaps in practice. If automated handoffs distance workers from patients, relationships may also be affected. The summit discussion did not establish how widespread these effects are, but it frames workforce protections and clinical accountability as part of the debate over healthcare AI.
healthcare worker surveillance software
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Workplace AI and State Rules
Khan’s remarks sit within a broader debate about technology’s effects on working conditions. She said digital technology has been used for decades to increase the extraction of labor and degrade those conditions. Her point was that automation is not the only source of workplace harm: monitoring and algorithmic direction can change workers’ jobs even when the underlying tasks remain.
She cited state-level measures addressing some uses of AI. According to Khan, bills passed in Illinois and Vermont prohibit replacing mental health workers with AI, while a California law bars companies from advertising an AI chatbot as a health professional. She also said a California bill under consideration would prevent workers from being required to train their replacements, including an AI system. The report did not provide the bill numbers or further details on their status.
“Even if they don’t lose a single job to AI, it doesn’t mean there are no harms to workers.”
— Mishal Khan, UC Berkeley Labor Center
How Broad Are the Risks?
The summit report does not quantify how often AI has caused the harms Khan described, or how outcomes differ across hospitals, roles and tools. It also does not identify particular products or provide evidence that all ambient scribes or management systems collect data for employment decisions. Those concerns were raised by workers and Khan, but the specific data practices and employer uses were not detailed.
The Uganda example illustrates a possible vulnerability when clinicians have little practice working without AI, but the report does not establish that AI caused the residents’ difficulty or describe the circumstances of their training. It also remains unclear how responsibility for errors involving AI recommendations would be divided among clinicians, employers and technology providers.
Policy and Workplace Decisions
Khan pointed to state legislation as one area to watch, particularly the California proposal concerning workers asked to train AI replacements. Its outcome and timeline were not given in the report. The broader questions raised at the summit will also depend on how healthcare employers introduce AI systems and whether staff have a role in setting rules for monitoring, data collection and task automation.
For now, the report documents concerns and examples rather than a settled picture of AI’s overall effect on healthcare employment. Further reporting would need to establish which systems are in use, what worker data they collect, how often clinicians rely on them, and what safeguards hospitals provide when tools fail or recommendations are disputed.
Key Questions
What did Mishal Khan warn about?
She warned that workplace AI may contribute to surveillance, de-skilling, reduced autonomy and changes to working conditions, even without eliminating jobs.
What does de-skilling mean in this discussion?
It refers to workers losing practice or specialized abilities when automated tools take over tasks they previously performed. Khan identified it as a particular concern for healthcare workers’ skills and scope of practice.
Did the report show that AI has already caused these harms across healthcare?
No. It reports Khan’s concerns and examples from conference discussions, but gives no figures establishing how widespread the harms are or proving that all AI systems produce them.
What laws or proposals did Khan mention?
Khan said measures in Illinois and Vermont prohibit replacing mental health workers with AI, and that California law bars advertising an AI chatbot as a health professional. She also cited a California bill under consideration about requiring workers to train AI replacements.
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