Team-based tools and artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly affect work and workers. Gartner Group has predicted that by 2023, fewer than one-third of digital workers will select the corporate office as their preferred place to work. In the resulting remote and hybrid work scenarios, technologies such as Microsoft Teams, Google Workplace and Slack are growing in influence while AI interventions endeavour to improve both work and workers.

In this talk I am going to cover part of my PhD research, an ethnographic study of a software development team and their work around and through the team-based tool Slack. Drawing on my empirical findings I will discuss how teamwork is framed in recent AI interventions and how an alternative framing might promote a deeper engagement with the site of team-based tools.

Axel Niklasson is a PhD student at the Centre for Human-Computer Interaction Design, City, University of London. His current research centres on the introduction of AI in team collaboration. Previous to his academic work Axel enjoyed a 20-year international career in telecom, media and software engineering. He earned his MSc from Lund University, Sweden.