Will AI agents free us from meaningless work? A human-centered analysis

Ghia, D., Ranjit, J., Cerquitelli, T., & Quercia, D.
CHIWORK
2026

Some claim that AI agents will free workers from the boring parts of their jobs, yet little is known about how workers themselves identify which tasks should be automated. Prior research focuses on occupations, overlooking that workers may experience varying levels of meaning across tasks within the same role. We address this gap with a task-level analysis grounded in Graeber’s theory of bullshit jobs. Using ratings from 202 workers on 171 workplace tasks, we (1) validate a five-item scale of perceived bullshitness, (2) show that perceived bullshitness strongly predicts desire for AI delegation, and (3) find that such tasks are also seen as requiring less human oversight. Together, these findings suggest that tasks perceived as bullshit are natural candidates for AI delegation, aligning worker preferences with perceived feasibility.

[Ghia et al., 2026] Ghia, D., Ranjit, J., Cerquitelli, T., & Quercia, D. (2026). Will AI agents free us from meaningless work? A human-centered analysis. CHIWORK (Adjunct) 2026, 13:1–13:5.