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Imagine a design team gathers on a video call in 2026. The lead opens the meeting, but before anyone speaks, an AI collaborator shares a prompt: “Here are three new visual directions – based on last week’s feedback and the client’s tone preference.”

No one misses a beat. The AI’s contribution is part of the rhythm; it’s as ordinary as a colleague suggesting an idea. This small exchange contains the reality that labour today is being redefined as cooperation between humans and machines. 

In his 1954 book Human Society in Ethics and Politics, philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote:

“The only thing that will redeem mankind is co-operation.”

And now, in a time where intelligent systems co-produce, co-design, and even co-decide with us, his vision is taking on an unexpected resonance. 

As we begin to look back at the most important AI developments throughout 2025, we can see that the story we’re writing is about shared labour – the blending of effort into collective creation. 

The turn towards cooperation 

Teamwork has often meant the coordination of separate tasks – one person does one thing, someone else does another thing, and you match those tasks up to create a cohesive whole. But the arrival of agentic AI systems is driving a kind of cooperation that we haven’t seen so clearly before, especially in corporate and digital creative settings. 

Research from MIT, Stanford and Salesforce AI earlier this year found that people increasingly see these systems as partners – entities that plan, interpret and adapt alongside them. In their study, workers reported higher satisfaction when AI support was framed as collaboration rather than delegation. The more the AI ‘joined’ the team, the more its output felt like joint work.

And we can see that same pattern across industries. At Workday, finance teams are now co-authoring reports with AI agents that analyse trends and suggest commentary before humans fine-tune tone and context. And in some organisations, Microsoft’s Security Copilot acts as a 24-hour analyst, triaging incidents and highlighting patterns while human staff make the final calls. In each case, productivity rises, and the sense of shared endeavour increases too. 

Do we have to rethink what labour really means?

For Russell, cooperation was ethical. He saw it as a foundation for flourishing – a state in which collective intelligence triumphs over competition. And we think that sentiment feels relevant again now, as AI systems join the workforce.

When machines take on routine work, the human role has to evolve. Labour becomes the art of direction – people have the capacity and time to set objectives, interpret nuance, and judge outcomes. 

A marketing professional, for example, might now manage a suite of AI agents generating campaign ideas and trend forecasts – then spend their time curating the emotional tone that makes the message land.

This is cooperation in its most contemporary form. A partnership between human imagination and machine precision.

And a growing body of evidence shows it’s changing the psychology of work. A 2025 survey by McKinsey found that 88% of companies use AI in at least one function, with a growing portion embedding AI into team structures rather than deploying it as a detached tool. People describe these agents less as assistants and more as colleagues – because they’re capable of insight, but dependent on guidance. The result is a subtle feeling of solidarity: we’re building something together.

Exploring the ethical dimension of shared work

We have to acknowledge that cooperation at this scale, and on this close person-and-machine level, brings new questions. When a task is completed jointly by human and AI, who owns the idea? And who’s responsible when outcomes go wrong? 

One recent paper published by Nature warns that future labour frameworks need to account for mutual agency – to make sure humans remain accountable, while preserving transparency about how AI actually contributes.

Because true cooperation still depends on trust. It requires systems that can explain their reasoning, learn from correction, and respect human goals; and people who can explain why and how they’re working with machines. The organisations we’ve seen succeeding in 2025 are those embedding explainability and shared authorship into their workflows – they’re treating collaboration as a discipline, not a novelty.

A future built on shared intelligence

If the industrial age taught us to divide labour, the AI age is teaching us to combine it. Across disciplines, work is becoming less about isolated performance, and more about synchronised creativity. 

Russell’s hope that cooperation might redeem humanity feels poignant. Each new experiment in human-AI teamwork invites us to imagine labour as a synthesis; and as AI continues to join our teams, the meaning of work becomes less mechanical and more communal. 

The redemption Russell wrote about might not come in a grand philosophical way, but in something more everyday; a shared project, and a shared sense of purpose. 

How are you working with AI right now? 

We want to know how you are using AI to co-create your projects and streamline your workday.

We’ll see you back here next week.