Future of Work with AI Agents: Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential across the U.S. Workforce

Executive Summary

The rapid rise of compound AI systems, also known as AI agents, is reshaping the labor market, raising concerns about job displacement, diminished human agency, and overreliance on automation. This paper introduces a novel auditing framework to assess which occupational tasks workers want AI agents to automate or augment, and how those desires align with current technological capabilities. The framework features an audio-enhanced mini-interview to capture nuanced worker desires and introduces the Human Agency Scale (HAS) to quantify the preferred level of human involvement. Using this framework, the WORKBank database was constructed, capturing preferences from 1,500 domain workers and capability assessments from AI experts across over 844 tasks spanning 104 occupations. The study highlights critical mismatches and opportunities for AI agent development, revealing diverse HAS profiles across occupations and offering early signals of how AI agent integration may reshape core human competencies.