More Room for Difference, Less Room for Change: Generative AI and Psychosocial Disabilities at Work

The growing incorporation of generative AI into work life creates new possibilities for accommodating diverse ways of functioning while raising questions about the reproduction of existing organisational norms. Drawing on qualitative research on how people with psychosocial disabilities use generative AI at work, this article examines the reconfiguration of relations between workers, working processes, and expected outcomes in work assemblages, which are mediated through generative AI. First, generative AI serves as workplace accommodation, helping participants adapt work to their ways of functioning. Second, it mediates between diverse work processes and expected outcomes, allowing workers to work in their own ways while producing outputs that meet workplace standards. Third, generative AI helps create digital doubles that communicate and present themselves in normative ways. By mediating between diverse ways of working and standardised organisational expectations, generative AI can reinforce existing organisational norms rather than encourage the systemic changes needed for workplace inclusion.