Prof. Paula Bialski

About

Paula Bialski is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of St. Gallen and the author of Middle Tech (Princeton University Press, 2024). Her research uses ethnography and to examine how digital systems reorganize work cultures. During her association, she will write up ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a Zurich-based robotics lab, focusing on how engineers coordinate work, evaluate safety and reliability, and decide what counts as “good enough” in complex technical systems.

The project also examines how AI-generated suggestions—ranging from code completions to troubleshooting advice—enter everyday engineering workflows, and how practitioners judge when these outputs can be trusted, ignored, or reworked. By following moments such as debugging sessions, design reviews, and test failures, Bialski traces how responsibility and risk are negotiated when automated recommendations become part of routine decision-making. The fellowship association will support analysis and writing that connects these situated workplace practices to broader questions of accountability and governance in contemporary AI-assisted engineering.

Research Group: Working with AI (February - December 2026)