Disturbances, Recreation, and Renovation of Labor: AI, Robots, Platforms, and Algorithms - II

Abstract

Labor is at the center of innovation, whether it is in services or manufacture, media, or any other activity. Popular media and, recently, academic discourse, have been brimming with an account on how new technological advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robots, platforms, and algorithms will transform the landscape of work, with ramifications for occupations and employment on a potentially grand scale. Science Technology and Society studies offer a good toolset to study such sort of disturbances, recreation, and renovation in labor and organizations.

In this panel, we invite diverse reflections that explicitly address how do these technologies replace and/or renovate labor practices and their meaning for societies. For instance, contributions can raise the question about what sort of materialities emerge in new labor ecologies or how modes of production are changing through a human-automation symbiosis in the work system. Contributions can be theoretically and/or empirically oriented.

Furthermore, we invite contributions focused on visibilizing workers that are behind opaque processes of technological solutions (e.g. crowd workers, maintainers), as well as types of related labor that is usually invisibilized (e.g. emotional labor, moderating, user content, etc.). Our exploration will include consideration of ethics, justice, system design, organization design, technology designers, maintenance, and new forms of work. We also invite to think about labor and power dynamics. For example: How data-driven technologies in the workplace change practices of managing control, surveillance or resistance? How do new technologies interact with outsourcing dynamics on a global scale, as well as with worker organizations?

Individual Presentations

• Digital Labor in Middle and Old Age - Miao Liao, Changsha University of Science and Technology

• Expertise on Display: To Compete in Expertise on the Line Markets - Anne Kovalainen, University of Turku, Turku School of Economics

• Platforms of Surveillance Capitalism - Juan Felipe Espinosa, Universidad Nacional Andrés Bello; Jorge Feregrino, FES Acatlán UNAM

• Surveillance Capitalism and the Global South - Rafael Evangelista, Unicamp - University of Campinas

Session Organizers

• Pedro Pablo Seguel, University of Texas at Austin

• Juan Felipe Espinosa, Universidad Nacional Andrés Bello

• Gloria Baigorrotegui, Instituto de Estudios Avanzados - Usach

• Jorge Feregrino, FES Acatlán UNAM