In a Stanford audit of 844 tasks in 104 US occupations, workers expressed positive attitudes toward automation by AI agents for 46.1% of their tasks, most often to free time for high-value work, but “generally prefer higher levels of human agency” than experts deemed “technologically necessary.”

SocioLens project,

Claim LD01-SL-C27 (v1.0)

Provenance and status

Claim type: Estimate
Publication status: Eligible for publication, with qualifiers: preprint
Verification state: Checked against the primary source; the source is a preprint. Who checked this claim is not recorded for it; claim checks so far were AI-led, and no person has checked claims against their sources.
Does not license: Evidence of what people do with AI at work
Limitations: Read in arXiv version 3 (1 February 2026); measures stated preferences, not use
Source (as cited): Shao, Zope, Jiang, Pei, Nguyen, Brynjolfsson & Yang, “Future of Work with AI Agents: Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential across the U.S. Workforce,” arXiv:2506.06576, 2026
Source type: Preprint (recorded as “Preprint”)
Institutional position: Independent academic (Stanford University)
Maturity of the evidence: Emerging evidence
Recorded date: 16 October 2026
Currentness / correction: This is the current version. No correction or concern is recorded on its sources.

Sources this version cites

Shao, Zope, Jiang, Pei, Nguyen, Brynjolfsson & Yang, “Future of Work with AI Agents: Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential across the U.S. Workforce,” arXiv:2506.06576, 2026 (Preprint)
Read the original

Version

This page shows version v1.0. Its record never changes, even when newer evidence arrives; the site may add a note to the page or withhold a figure not cleared for public use.

This pinned version is also the current version.

Versions: v1.0 · current

Raw record: every recorded field, with its coded values

All 25 canonical Claim fields, verbatim, with the coded values derived from them. The plain-language labels above are read from these.

Claim type (coded): ESTIMATE (as printed: “ESTIMATE”)
Publication status (coded): ELIGIBLE (PREPRINT) (as printed: “ELIGIBLE WITH PREPRINT QUALIFIER”)
Verification state (coded): CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY (PREPRINT)
Source type (coded): PREPRINT
Maturity (coded): EMERGING

#	Canonical field	Canonical value (verbatim)	Normalized (Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2)
1	CLAIM ID	LD01-SL-C27	—
2	PUBLIC-FACING CLAIM	In a Stanford audit of 844 tasks in 104 US occupations, workers expressed positive attitudes toward automation by AI agents for 46.1% of their tasks, most often to free time for high-value work, but “generally prefer higher levels of human agency” than experts deemed “technologically necessary.”	—
3	CLAIM TYPE	ESTIMATE	base_types: ESTIMATE
4	RESEARCH STRAND	B — Evidence that could tell the accounts apart	—
5	MATURITY	EMERGING	states: EMERGING
6	SOURCE	Shao, Zope, Jiang, Pei, Nguyen, Brynjolfsson & Yang, “Future of Work with AI Agents: Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential across the U.S. Workforce,” arXiv:2506.06576, 2026	source_ids: SRC-SL-SHAO-ET-AL-WORKBANK-ARXIV-2506-06576
7	SOURCE TYPE	Preprint	classes: PREPRINT
8	INSTITUTIONAL POSITION	Independent academic (Stanford University)	—
9	SCOPE	United States; 104 occupations in O*NET; 2025 survey	—
10	DESIGN	Survey of workers’ preferences and experts’ capability ratings, using a five-level Human Agency Scale	—
11	SAMPLE / DATASET	1,500 domain workers; 52 AI experts; 844 tasks	—
12	MODEL / TOOL / VERSION	AI agents in general	—
13	COMPARATOR	Experts’ ratings of technical feasibility	—
14	MAIN RESULT	Positive attitudes to automation for 46.1% of tasks; workers generally prefer more human agency than experts deem technologically necessary	—
15	INFERENTIAL TARGET	What role workers want AI agents to play in their work	—
16	DOES NOT LICENSE	Evidence of what people do with AI at work	—
17	VERIFICATION STATE	CONTENT VERIFIED PREPRINT	state: CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY · qualifiers: PREPRINT · verified_by: UNKNOWN
18	LIMITATIONS	Read in arXiv version 3 (1 February 2026); measures stated preferences, not use	—
19	CONTRADICTORY / SUPPORTING SOURCES	LD01-SL-C23	—
20	GEOGRAPHY / LANGUAGE	US / English	—
21	DISTRIBUTIONAL LEDGER	Not analysed in this claim	—
22	R01 / FIELD-MAP LINKS	LD-01, T4, D2	—
23	WHAT WOULD CHANGE THIS CLAIM?	Data on actual use showing workers delegating more than they say they want	—
24	PUBLICATION STATUS	ELIGIBLE WITH PREPRINT QUALIFIER	state: ELIGIBLE · qualifiers: PREPRINT
25	RECORDED DATE	2026-10-16	—

Field 22 references resolved against Field Map v0.2: LD-01 (LIVING_DEBATE); T4 (TENSION); D2 (DOMAIN)

The sources as recorded, with their record IDs and coded source types:

Pinned Sources (field 6, version-specific)

“Shao, Zope, Jiang, Pei, Nguyen, Brynjolfsson & Yang, “Future of Work with AI Agents: Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential across the U.S. Workforce,” arXiv:2506.06576, 2026” → Shao et al. (2026), “Future of Work with AI Agents…” (SRC-SL-SHAO-ET-AL-WORKBANK-ARXIV-2506-06576--v1.0) — Shao, Zope, Jiang, Pei, Nguyen, Brynjolfsson & Yang, “Future of Work with AI Agents: Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential across the U.S. Workforce,” arXiv:2506.06576, 2026; class PREPRINT (explicit public provenance pin)

Cited by Living Debate versions

What kind of thing is generative AI, and does the answer predict anything? (v0.1) LD-01

Cite this page

SocioLens project. (2026, October 16). In a Stanford audit of 844 tasks in 104 US occupations, workers expressed positive attitudes toward automation by AI agents for 46.1% of their tasks, most often to free time for high-value work, but “generally prefer higher levels of human agency” than experts deemed “technologically necessary.” [Claim LD01-SL-C27, version v1.0]. SocioLens. https://sociolens-web.pages.dev/claims/ld01-sl-c27/v1.0/

@misc{sociolens_ld01_sl_c27_v1_0,
  author = {{SocioLens project}},
  title = {In a Stanford audit of 844 tasks in 104 US occupations, workers expressed positive attitudes toward automation by AI agents for 46.1\% of their tasks, most often to free time for high-value work, but “generally prefer higher levels of human agency” than experts deemed “technologically necessary.”},
  year = {2026},
  date = {2026-10-16},
  howpublished = {\url{https://sociolens-web.pages.dev/claims/ld01-sl-c27/v1.0/}},
  note = {Claim LD01-SL-C27, version v1.0}
}

The link points to this version, whose record never changes. For a finding, cite the original study as well: SocioLens summarizes research and does not replace it.

Research-of-record provenance

Materialized by sociolens-materializer 0.6.0 at 2026-09-28T20:00:00.000Z; normalization contract SocioLens — Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2 — Pre-Spike Materialization Contract (v1.0.2). Content seal SHA-256 0154fc1d56322b661890d493f5921d1e33d42e698a712961cd713341dd06f29b.

Repository-authored inputs (not Drive exports)

SocioLens claim — LD01-SL-C27 v1.0 (v1.0) — written in the SocioLens repository by Project Lead (Claude, AI) on 2026-10-16; no Drive identity exists. Authority: AGENTS.md "Authority" (the Project Lead decides research content within the research-integrity rules) and the Owner's choice in the SocioLens project chat on 16 October 2026 to build the LD-01 debate; a new Claim, first version, written from the project's LD-01 source notes, checked against full texts, official web pages or official abstracts. Block “ENTRY 27 — LD01-SL-C27” SHA-256 e30bbbc1db858c21e82cc7c0357327fafed6c18ab7a160554265c47b8b915929; fixture fixtures/authored/claims/LD01-SL-C27--v1.0.

Builder decisions (not Drive data)

VERSION = v1.0 — basis: Claim version taken from the repository-authored claim fixture version (SocioLens claim — LD01-SL-C27 v1.0); the first version of a new Claim of the LD-01 debate
CURRENT_POINTER = true — basis: repository-authored claim "SocioLens claim — LD01-SL-C27 v1.0" (Project Lead (Claude, AI), 2026-10-16); basis: AGENTS.md "Authority" (the Project Lead decides research content within the research-integrity rules) and the Owner's choice in the SocioLens project chat on 16 October 2026 to build the LD-01 debate; a new Claim, first version, written from the project's LD-01 source notes, checked against full texts, official web pages or official abstracts
FIELD_6_SOURCE_REFERENCE = SRC-SL-SHAO-ET-AL-WORKBANK-ARXIV-2506-06576--v1.0 — basis: field 6 of ENTRY 27 — LD01-SL-C27 cites "Shao, Zope, Jiang, Pei, Nguyen, Brynjolfsson & Yang, “Future of Work with AI Agents: Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential across the U.S. Workforce,” arXiv:2506.06576, 2026"; the only field-6 segment of this ClaimVersion's repository-authored ledger block.
SOURCE_PROVENANCE_PIN = SRC-SL-SHAO-ET-AL-WORKBANK-ARXIV-2506-06576--v1.0 — basis: explicit version-pinned public provenance of this ClaimVersion (Amendment v1.2 §6): the pinned field-6 Source record "Shao, Zope, Jiang, Pei, Nguyen, Brynjolfsson & Yang, “Future of Work with AI Agents: Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential across the U.S. Workforce,” arXiv:2506.06576, 2026".