
(French below)
The WAI@U project, coordinated by Claire Marzo and funded by the AURORA network, gives the IAG4UPEC project an international dimension.
This additional project, entitled ‘Working with AI at University’ (WAI@U), aims to study the impact of AI and GIA on work in universities. This research focuses specifically on the three types of work found in universities: administrative work, teaching and research. WAI@U aims to compare the use and reception of G/AI at work in order to identify (IT), categorise, evaluate (Management) and regulate (Law) changes in an international and comparative context with the participation of three carefully selected universities: UPEC Paris Créteil, UIBK Innsbruck, CBS Copenhagen.
PROJECT SUMMARY:
Artificial intelligence (AI) and generative artificial intelligence (GAI) are fashionable. Fun, new and transformative, they also raise questions and fears particularly when it comes to work. First, the current hype around artificial intelligence (AI) conceals the substantial human intervention underlying its development. Second, AI and GAI complete but also radically change working methods and sometimes jobs.
This project entitled ‘Working with AI at University’ (WAI@U) aims at focusing on the impact of AI and GAI on work at universities. This research will focus specifically on the three types of work that we find at university: admin work, teaching and research.
WAI@U aims at comparing the use and reception of AI/GAI at work to identify (IT), categorize, assess (Management) and regulate (Law) the changes in an international, comparative (three carefully selected universities: UPEC Paris Créteil, UIBK Innsbruck, CBS Copenhagen) and interdisciplinary study (IT, Management, Law).
OBJECTIVE:
Artificial intelligence and generative artificial intelligence have abruptly transformed social
relationships and work management. The Council of Europe defines AI as algorithmic tools which accomplish perceptive and cognitive functions previously reserved to Human beings. GAI adds creation. Those tools are reshaping our ways of thinking, creating, communicating and thus working. WAI@U’s general objective is to focus on work at universities to question and analyse those changes. Our goal is to identify, categorize, map, assess and regulate these changes from an international, comparative and interdisciplinary perspective.
SCOPE: THREE CONCRETE OBJECTS OF STUDY: To make this study grounded in reality and feasible, this research will focus specifically on the three types of work i.e. different but related concrete activities that we find at university: 1) admin work, 2) teaching and 3) researching. Universities will both be the subject of the research and the actors of the research, which makes it easier in terms of accessibility.
INTERDISCIPLINARY: A pluri and interdisciplinary study involving IT, management and law will provide a complex framework for comparing the creation (IT), the uses (Management) and the regulation (Law) of AI and GAI in the different universities. They will be complemented by punctual comparisons with sociology, economics, philosophy (thanks to the 3 universities’ teams).
COMPARATIVE: The comparison will be particularly interesting because each of the three universities chosen in this study have a specificity.
UPEC in Paris Créteil is building its own GAI for UPEC university.
https://iag4upec.hypotheses.org/.
DiSC in Innsbruck is a pluridisciplinary Digital Science Center:
https://www.uibk.ac.at/en/disc/) and a Research Center Digital Humanities:
https://www.uibk.ac.at/en/digital-humanities/.
CBS in Copenhagen has an ongoing project on Human/AI collaboration and students’
perspectives (Razmerita, 2024) and https://www.cbsai.dk/.
CONFERENCES
Conference/Task A1: Data analysis: AI and admin (Paris)
Leads: C. Marzo
The objective is to study the use of AI/GAI by admin. Informal preliminary research has shown a rapid evolution. We already have a large share of data. But the challenge is to update these data and to compare them between universities. This will require a solid comparative methodology and strong theoretical tools to strengthen the conclusions drawn from the comparisons. But this will be worth it as task A1 is going to lead to the mapping of uses and yield three scientific papers targeting peer review journals in law, IT and management in French and English.
Conference/Task A2: Data analysis: AI and teaching (Copenhagen)
Leads: L. Razmerita
Same as before but the objective is to study the use of AI/GAI for teaching. This is also the question of how AI/GAI can help us teach/learn.
Conference/Task A3: Data analysis: AI and research (Innsbruck)
Leads: A. Jatowt
Same as before but the objective is to study the use of AI for research. This one is very relevant as it questions the methods used by researchers and how AI/GAI can transform the way we do research in our different disciplines.
PARTICIPANTS
● Claire Marzo is Associate professor in Public law at UPEC (MIL).
⇨ She intends to expand her experience on AI and Digitalisation. She has worked on workers’
appropriation of AI via social dialogue (Chagny & Marzo, 2025) as well as on the hidden work of AI (Casilli & Marzo, 2025). She has also extensively worked on digitalisation and platformisation.
⇨ She is habilitated to supervise research and she will rely on her experience in leading projects – as a project co-coordinator (IA4UPEC project); – as sole coordinator of project (CEPASSOC project 2021-2024); – as director of 15 books and special issues and organiser of over 30 conferences.
● Adam Jatowt is a Full Professor of Data Science affiliated 50% with the Department of Computer Science and 50% with the Digital Science Center at Innsbruck University. He serves as the Deputy Head of DiSC and of the Research Center Digital Humanities at UIBK.
⇨ Adam has expertise in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Information Retrieval (IR) and has been lately researching the use of large language models in various tasks of IR and NLP as well as analyzing their reasoning capabilities.
⇨ Adam is a PI of the Analyzer project (AI enabled Sustainability Jurisdiction Demonstrator) that is funded by FFG and aims at using AI for supporting EU taxonomy and sustainability reporting. He has organized over 25 workshops on NLP, IR and AI. Adam is also a recipient of the F. W. Bessel Research Award by the A. von Humboldt Society and the International Excellence Fellowship from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).
● Liana Razmerita is Associate Professor of Management at CBS.
⇨ She has extensive experience in international collaborations and project management. She has worked on a lot on AI-Human collaborations and has focused particularly on students’ learning with AI.
⇨ She is also now starting a new project on research and work with AI and GAI. She just got an award for Human-AI Collaboration: The Changing Nature of Academic Work, Carlsberg and Otto Mønsted funding grant (approx.120.000DKK).
FRENCH SUMMARY
Le projet WAI@U coordonné par Claire Marzo et subventionné par le réseau AURORA donne une dimension internationale au projet IAG4UPEC.
Ce projet complémentaire intitulé “Working with AI at University” (WAI@U) vise à étudier l’impact de l’IA et de et l’IAG sur le travail dans les universités. Cette recherche se concentre spécifiquement sur les trois types de travail qu’on trouve à l’université : le travail administratif, l’enseignement et la recherche. WAI@U vise à comparer l’utilisation et la réception de l’IA/G au travail pour identifier (IT), catégoriser, évaluer (Gestion) et réguler (Droit) les changements dans un contexte international et comparatif avec la participation de trois universités soigneusement sélectionnées : UPEC Paris Créteil, UIBK Innsbruck, CBS Copenhague.

