I-O Psychology and AI

Artificial intelligence is changing how organizations hire, manage, and develop people. Industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology is already part of how that change is tested, studied, and discussed with government.

Will AI Replace This Career?

  • Growth is projected despite high AI exposure. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) places I-O psychologists in its highest AI exposure category, yet projects 6% job growth from 2025 to 2035, twice the 3% average for all occupations. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also notes that exposure “does not imply job loss” (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026).
  • Jobs held by IOs are still growing. The same report projects 10% growth for management analysts (often called management consultants) and 11% for training and development specialists, and it attributes part of the demand for training specialists to continuous training as AI advances (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026).
  • The OECD concludes that “for many workers, the effects of artificial intelligence (AI) will be visible not in terms of lost employment but through changes in the tasks they perform at work and changes in job quality” (Green et al., 2023). Systematic approaches to job design, work coordination, and skill development are at the core of what I-O psychologists do.
  • No drop in hiring so far. A 2026 Federal Reserve analysis found that “thus far, there is no evidence of a reduction in job postings for industries or firms which have higher levels of AI adoption” (Liu & Webber, 2026).

People Are the Hardest Part of AI Adoption

A 2026 Stanford Digital Economy Lab study of 51 successful enterprise AI deployments found that “77% of the hardest challenges practitioners faced were invisible costs: change management, data quality, and process redesign, not technical issues.” Similar projects took weeks at one company and years at another, and the researchers traced the difference to executive sponsorship, existing organizational processes, and end users’ willingness (Pereira et al., 2026). A graduate education in I-O Psychology provides the pathways for unlocking AI adoption through leading change, redesigning work, and earning employees’ trust.

What the Field Says Right Now

In 2026, Oxford University Press published Artificial Intelligence for I-O Psychologists: Research and Applications, a 30-chapter handbook on how the field works with AI (Thompson et al., 2026). Its authors describe I-O psychologists as already leading this work:

  • Ahead of other business fields. “Well-educated I-O professionals are already more prepared than most other business-oriented professionals to benefit from and help organizations benefit from AI-related advancements” (Cunningham & Bergman, 2026, p. 418).
  • Helping people work with AI. “I-O psychologists are qualified to train leaders and employees to work effectively with AI tools, ensuring technology supplements human judgment rather than replacing it” (Ristow & Smith, 2026, p. 407).
  • Keeping people at the center. I-O psychologists are “uniquely positioned” to ensure that “the ethics and values of individual dignity, justice, integrity, fidelity, and beneficence” are “considered and safeguarded” as organizations develop and implement AI (Shoss et al., 2026, p. 345).
  • New career paths. “A growing number of I-O professionals are already taking roles in HR tech companies as subject matter experts, user experience researchers, and product managers” (Morelli et al., 2026, p. 518), in a chapter led by former IOMP faculty member Neil Morelli.

I-O Psychologists Are Already Shaping AI at Work

Working with government:

  • Members of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) AI task force met with a Commissioner of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in 2022 to discuss AI in the workplace (Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2022b).
  • In January 2023, I-O psychologist Nancy Tippins testified on behalf of SIOP at the EEOC’s public meeting on employment discrimination in AI and automated systems (Tippins, 2023).
  • SIOP responded to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s request for information on national AI priorities (Bruno, 2024).
  • In 2024, SIOP endorsed the proposed federal Workforce for AI Trust Act, supporting an AI workforce that includes those “who can test and validate AI systems” (Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2024).
  • The U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s guidance for hiring federal AI workers includes a plan to train HR specialists, hiring managers, and industrial-organizational psychologists to put it into practice (U.S. Office of Personnel Management, 2024).

Setting and applying standards:

  • SIOP launched a task force on AI-based hiring assessments in 2021. Its January 2023 recommendations state that AI tools used for hiring and promotion “should meet the same standards that traditional employment tests have been subjected to for decades” (Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2023).

I-O Psychologists are at the Forefront of Research Contributing to AI in the Workplace

Recent studies in top I-O and management journals:

  • Accuracy of AI video interview scoring (Hickman et al., 2025, Journal of Applied Psychology)
  • AI as a rater of work performance (Li et al., 2026, Personnel Psychology)
  • Generative AI and employee creativity: a field experiment (Sun et al., 2025, Journal of Applied Psychology)
  • AI’s control over decisions and worker stress (Klonek & Parker, 2025, Journal of Organizational Behavior)
  • How trust in AI teammates forms (Erengin et al., 2025, Journal of Organizational Behavior)
  • How coworkers see help given with AI (Dishop et al., 2025, Journal of Business and Psychology)
  • Automated coaching and employee learning (Dust & Steed, 2025, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology)
  • Leaders who treat robots like people (Cao et al., 2025, Journal of Management)
  • How algorithms reshape expert work (Kim et al., 2025, Academy of Management Journal)

AI in the IOMP Curriculum

IOMP’s practitioner instructors bring the AI tools they use at work into the classroom. In Dr. Rob Stilson’s courses, for example, students use AI for vibe coding, for custom tutorials that get them over the last mile of new concepts, for translating other scenarios into people analytics terms, for presentations and data storytelling, and as a skeptical stakeholder to practice against. They also learn what it takes to bring an AI agent to life in a company: where it lives, who should own it, and who needs to be involved. His advice to students: “Instead of having AI do something for you, have it teach you how to do it.”

IOMP’s curriculum includes courses in these same areas, such as Testing & Measurements, Talent Acquisition, and Competency Modeling and Evaluation.