On 23 October 2026, the International Labour Organization (ILO) published Working Paper 182, AI Ethics and the ILO’s international labour standards system: exploring synergies, by ILO researchers Jordi Agustí-Panareda and Daniel Samaan.
The paper observes that many AI ethics guidelines remain broad and voluntary, giving limited guidance for concrete workplace situations. It compares five widely recognised AI ethics principles (justice, beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy and explicability) with the ethical foundations of the ILO’s labour standards, and finds strong agreement on fairness, human dignity, well-being and the prevention of harm.
It also notes a gap. AI ethics frameworks tend to focus on individual autonomy, privacy and transparency, while labour standards add collective rights such as freedom of association, collective bargaining and social dialogue, which are often missing from mainstream AI ethics debates.
The authors point to new questions raised by AI at work, including the use of workers’ personal data, algorithmic management, workplace surveillance and the transparency of AI-assisted decisions such as screening job applicants. They call for further research and dialogue towards a human-centred approach to technological change at work.
The dignity of work and of the worker is a long-standing theme of Catholic social teaching, and a concern of Catholic AI and Human Dignity.
