Lab for the Future of Work and Well-being

Lab Directors:

Prof. Yanhui Wu

Professor, Economics and Management and Strategy

About the Lab

Our mission is to advance understanding of how generative AI is transforming labor markets, leisure, and overall wellbeing, with a particular focus on China. We are committed to conducting rigorous, data-driven, and causally robust research to generate actionable insights. Distinctively, our people-centered approach places human wellbeing at the core of our analysis, going beyond productivity and profitability to explore how technological change can foster better jobs and lives.

Project Description

AI Skills in Demand: Mapping the New Landscape of Work in China

Leveraging multi-billion job posting data since 2015, this project quantifies the evolving demand for various AI skills and their associated wage returns in the Chinese labor market, offering the most comprehensive, data-driven picture of how AI is reshaping workforce needs and opportunities.

AI Jobs: Tasks Rebundled, Occupations Unraveled

This project investigates how AI technologies are driving the rebundling of work tasks and the reorganization of occupations, with a special focus on the experiences of middle managers and gig workers.

AI Education: Smarter Classroom, Bitter Lessons

Using large-scale survey data and experimental evidence, this project examines the impact of AI adoption in educational settings, assessing how intelligent tools influence teaching effectiveness and student learning.

AI Leisure: Fun or Fatigue

This project explores how generative AI is reshaping leisure consumption, from fitness activities to entertainment experiences, providing evidence on the ways technology is enhancing—or challenging—people’s wellbeing outside of work.

AI Entertainment: Recreating Recreation

This project explores the potential of AI-driven tools to design and deliver educational entertainment experiences that both engage and instruct. Using experimental methods, we assess how AI can transform recreation into meaningful learning opportunities.

Research Labs.

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Deloitte-HKU Lab for Organizational
Transformation

The success of organizations depends on its ability to attract the right people, motivate effective action, and coordinate efforts. Artificial intelligence is transforming all three of these areas, requiring organizations to adapt their structures for the new challenges and opportunities.

Our lab focuses on guiding this essential transformation. Our work identifies effective organizational response and examine their interaction with markets, norms, and institutions. Through research and collaboration with industry practitioners, we assess the current state of AI adoption in firms, identify common pitfalls, and develop frameworks that help leaders structure and address these critical challenges.

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Lab for AI-Agents in Business and Economics

Our mission is to pioneer AI-driven solutions for business challenges by developing multi-agent systems and domain-specific AI architectures, while guiding organizations through ethical, scalable, and transformative AI adoption. We focus on developing platforms for AI agents and multi-agent architecture for business and management, designing AI agents for specific business applications with deep domain knowledge, and studying the economic impact of AI transformation on human behavior, business and organizations.

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AI Implementation (AI²) Lab

The AI Implementation (AI²) Lab is dedicated to turning AI and business research into real-world AI adoption. We collaborate with organizations to identify frictions, develop deployment strategies, and measure impact of AI implementation. Our work focuses on helping firms adopt and scale AI, designing business models for the AI era, and incubating AI-related innovations through experimentation and prototyping.