AI as Compensatory Infrastructure: Sensemaking, Responsibility, and Labour in Value-Driven Organisations
David Colborn-Clark 
Across voluntary and non-profit charity organisations, GenAI is increasingly adopted, in response to chronic resource constraints. In value-driven settings where trust and care are central, GenAI is framed as a way to reduce administrative burden. Yet little is known about how GenAI is used in everyday practice. Drawing on qualitative workshops and interviews with frontline staff and senior leaders in the UK VCSE sector, we examine how GenAI reshapes work, responsibility, and values. Our findings evidence that the promise of reduced workload often gives way to new forms of labour, including evaluation or corrective tasks. Rather than functioning as an efficiency tool, GenAI operates as compensatory infrastructure, stabilising work under pressure while redistributing labour. We further show that responsibility for responsible GenAI use is individualised, and that GenAI becomes a site of value negotiation, surfacing tensions around organisational voice. We call for more collective spaces to support value-aligned GenAI use.
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