Professor Beth Bechky Named Microsoft Research AI & Society Fellow

An internationally recognized organizational ethnographer, Professor Beth Bechky explores the future of work and how workers collaborate to solve problems, struggle to coordinate, and manage the challenges of technological change. 

For her research Beth puts herself in the shoes of workers to experience how they collaborate to solve problems, struggle to coordinate, and deal with technological change. She’s worked as a production assistant in the film industry, assembled semiconductor equipment in a clean room, and assisted technicians in a biotech lab.

Recently, Bechky with her colleague Professor Melissa Mazmanian of UC Irvine, was named a Microsoft Research AI & Society Fellow. The fellows program supports interdisciplinary AI research in the context of societal impact, offering opportunities for fellows from fields beyond core computer sciences to join and support interdisciplinary research conversations with Microsoft researchers.

In collaboration with Mazmanian and their Microsoft fellows cohort, Bechky will study how screenwriters are responding to the use of generative AI in Hollywood and how current technologies, social structures, and economic models are shaping the future of creative work in a world of generative AI.

"This research gives us a chance to explore how generative AI is revolutionizing screenwriting as we examine the groundbreaking shifts in the world of film and TV."

— Professor Beth Bechky

“We have the opportunity to ask critical questions about how screenwriters’ work is changing in response to the challenges of generative AI in the film and television industry,” said Bechky, who holds the Graduate School of Management's Stephen G. Newberry Chair in Leadership.

Bechky has published her work in journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science and American Journal of Sociology. 

Her book, "Blood, Powder and Residue: How Crime Labs Translate Evidence into Proof," was published in 2021 by Princeton University Press. In it, she shows how the work of forensic scientists is fraught with the tensions of serving justice—constantly having to anticipate the expectations of the world of law and the assumptions of the public—while also staying true to their scientific ideals.

Bechky is an associate editor at Administrative Science Quarterly and was formerly a senior editor at Organization Science and the co-editor of Qualitative Organizational Research. She served on the council of the Organization, Occupations and Work division of the American Sociological Association from 2009-2012.

Her first faculty position was at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. She then joined the UC Davis Graduate School of Management in 2001 and rose to associate professor before becoming the Seymour Milstein Professor of Ethics, Corporate Governance and Strategy at New York University’s Stern School of Business. She returned to UC Davis in 2022 and was named holder of the Stephen G. Newberry Endowed Chair in Leadership, recognizing her scholarship and teaching.