Workforce Lab Expert Panel – AI agents and the future of work blog hero

Workforce Lab Expert Panel – AI agents and the future of work

How will AI agents reshape work and when will the biggest changes arrive? 30 academic luminaries weigh in.

Author: Eliza SarasohnSeptember 3rd, 2025

 

AI is transforming the way we work—but exactly how and when the biggest advances will play out is still uncertain.

To better understand both the timeline and the nature of these changes, Slack’s Workforce Lab convened a panel of 30 leading academic experts in artificial intelligence. These thinkers span a wide range of disciplines—including economics, computer science, law, policy, and ethics—and represent some of the world’s top academic institutions.

Meet our expert panel

Workforce Lab expert panel

We asked them a series of questions about how and when AI agents will reshape the way the world works.

Their answers reveal a thoughtful and nuanced view of what’s ahead. Use the right/left and up/down scroll controls to explore their predictions in the interactive data visualization below, or click here to view the full dashboard.

What’s your number one piece of advice to business leaders?

Prioritize personal experimentation! It's very common for busy executives to try AI tools just a few times and then miss how rapidly capabilities are advancing.

John HortonAssociate Professor, MIT Sloan School of Management and NBER, Research Associate

Don’t lose sight of organizational culture. Even if your headcount substantially reduces, you still need people who want to show up at work.

Elizabeth GerberProfessor of Engineering, Northwestern University

 

Create space and resources for employees to experiment with AI tools, and make this experimentation a key criterion of job success.

Andrey FradkinAssociate Professor of Marketing, Boston University

Ask the experts 

Have a future-of-work question you’d like our expert panel to weigh in on? Share it with us at workforcelab@salesforce.com and we’ll consider it for upcoming survey rounds.

Get the full story behind the predictions

Register for our webinar to hear from Slack researchers and the experts as they dive into the implications for teams and workplaces.

 

 

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