Digital labour – Page 2 – Data Big and Small

Uninvited protagonists: the social networks of Venezuelan AI data workers

After years of work, the long-awaited good news: my article ‘Uninvited Protagonists: The Networked Agency of Venezuelan Platform Data Workers‘, co-authored with Juana Torres-Cierpe, has just been published in New Technology, Work and Employment!

Workers in Venezuela are powering AI production, often under tough conditions. Sanctions and a deep political-economic crisis have pushed them to work for platforms that pay in US dollars, albeit at low rates. They constitute a large reservoir for technology producers from rich countries. But they are not passive players.

They build resilience, rework their environment, and sometimes engage in acts of resistance, with support from different segments of their personal networks. From strong local ties to loose online connections, these informal webs help them cope, adapt, and occasionally push back. Their diversified relationships comprise an unofficial and often hidden, albeit largely digitised relational infrastructure that sustains their work and shapes collective action.

These findings invite to rethink agency as embedded in workers’ personal networks. To respond to adversities, one must liaise with equally affected peers, with family and friends who offer support, etc. Social ties ultimately determine who is enabled to respond, and who is not; whether any benefits and costs are shared, and with whom; whether any solution will be conflictual or peaceful. Social networks are not accessory but constitute the very channel through which Venezuelan data workers cope with hardship.

Not all relationships play the same role, though. Venezuelans discover online data work through their strong ties with family, close friends, and neighbours. To convert their online earnings into local currency, they rely on their broader social networks of relatives and friends living abroad and indirect relationships with intermediaries. For managing their day-to-day activities, Venezuelans expand their social networks through online services like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram, connecting with diverse and less-close peers within and outside the country. Different social ties affect the various stages of the data working experience.

Overall, no Venezuelan could work alone – and the networked interactions that sustain each of them against hardship have made them massively present, as ‘uninvited protagonists,’ in international platforms. Their massive presence in the planetary data-tasking market is a supply rather than demand-driven phenomenon.

This analysis also sheds light on the reasons why mobilisation is uncommon among platform data workers. Other studies noted diverging orientations of workers, unclear goals, lack of focus, and insufficient leadership. Another powerful reason hinges upon the predominance of weak ties in building up online group membership: indeed, distant acquaintances are insufficient to prompt people to action if their intrinsic motivations are low.

The article is available in open access here.

Call for Abstracts: INDL-8 Conference in Bologna

It is my pleasure to announce that the call for abstracts for the upcoming INDL-8 conference is now open.

The conference reaches Italy this year. It will take place in the most ancient University in the western world, Bologna, on 10-12 September 2025.

The overarching topic of this year’s conference is ‘Contesting Digital Labor: Resistance, counteruses, and new directions for research’. The goal is to explore how platform workers navigate, challenge, and reshape algorithmic management systems while forging innovative forms of solidarity and collective action. We also aim to explore the perspectives that technological developments open for workers in order to escape everyday surveillance, to resist top-down control and to organise to defend their rights.

In addition to presentations that directly address these questions, we welcome proposals that analyse a broader range of issues related to digital labour.

To read the full Call and submit your abstract, please visit the conference management website.

The deadline is 27 April 2025.

NB: A small number of scholarships to partly cover travel/subsistence costs will be made available – stay tuned for more information.

NB2: The keynotes and plenaries will be announced very soon.

Please feel free to share with any scholars and postgraduate students who might be interested.

The digital labour of AI in Latin America

Another article has just been published! Another one that is based on a DiPLab-based group collaboration (with A.A. Casilli, M. Fernández Massi, J. Longo, J. Torres Cierpe and M. Viana Braz) and that uses data from multiple countries. It is entitled ‘The digital labour of artificial intelligence in Latin America: a comparison of Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela’ and is part of a special issue of Globalizations on ‘The Political Economy of AI in Latin America’. This article lifts the veil on the precarious and low-paid data workers who, from Latin America, engage in AI preparation, verification, and impersonation, often for foreign technology producers. Focusing on three countries (Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela), we use original mixed-method data to compare and contrast these cases in order to reveal common patterns and expose the specificities that distinguish the region.

The analysis unveils the central place of Latin America in the provision of data work. To bring costs down, AI production thrives on countries’ economic hardship and inequalities. In Venezuela and to a lesser extent Argentina, acute economic crisis fuels competition and favours the emergence of ‘elite’ (young and STEM-educated) data workers, while in more stable but very unequal Brazil, this activity is left to relatively underprivileged segments of the workforce. AI data work also redefines these inequalities insofar as, in all three countries, it blends with the historically prevalent informal economy, with workers frequently shifting between the two. There are spillovers into other sectors, with variations depending on country and context, which tie informality to inequality.

Our study has policy implications at global and local levels. Globally, it calls for more attention to the conditions of AI production, especially workers’ rights and pay. Locally, it advocates solutions for the recognition of skills and experience of data workers, in ways that may support their further professional development and trajectories, possibly also facilitating some initial forms of worker organization.

The version of record is here, while an open-access preprint is available here.

Where does AI come from?

I am thrilled to announce that an important article has just seen the light. Entitled ‘Where does AI come from? A global case study across Europe, Africa, and Latin America’, it is part of a special issue of New Political Economy on ‘Power relations in the digital economy‘. It is the result of joint work that I have done with members of the Diplab team (A.A. Casilli, M. Cornet, C. Le Ludec and J. Torres Cierpe) on the organisational and geographical forces underpinning the supply chains of artificial intelligence (AI). Where and how do AI producers recruit workers to perform data annotation and other essential, albeit lower-level supporting tasks to feed machine-learning algorithms? The literature reports a variety of organisational forms, but the reasons of these differences and the ways data work dovetails with local economies have remained for long under-researched. This article does precisely this, clarifying the structure and organisation of these supply chains, and highlighting their impacts on labour conditions and remunerations.

Framing AI as an instance of the outsourcing and offshoring trends already observed in other globalised industries, we conduct a global case study of the digitally enabled organisation of data work in France, Madagascar, and Venezuela. We show that the AI supply chains procure data work via a mix of arm’s length contracts through marketplace-like platforms, and of embedded firm-like structures that offer greater stability but less flexibility, with multiple intermediate arrangements that give different roles to platforms. Each solution suits specific types and purposes of data work in AI preparation, verification, and impersonation. While all forms reproduce well-known patterns of exclusion that harm externalised workers especially in the Global South, disadvantage manifests unevenly depending on the structure of the supply chains, with repercussions on remunerations, job security, and working conditions.

Marketplace- and firm-like platforms in the supply chains for data work in Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Dark grey countries: main case studies, light grey countries: comparison cases. Organisational modes range from almost totally marketplace oriented (darker rectangle, Venezuela) to almost entirely firm oriented (lighter rectangle, Madagascar). AI preparation (darker circle) is ubiquitous, but AI verification (darker triangle) and AI impersonation (darker star) tend to happen in ‘deep labour’ and firm-like organisations where embeddedness is higher.

We conclude that responses based only on worker reclassification, as attempted in some countries especially in the Global North, are insufficient. Rather, we advocate a policy mix at both national and supra-national levels, also including appropriate regulation of technology and innovation, and promotion of suitable strategies for economic development.

The Version of record is here, while here is an open access preprint.

Meet the human workers behind AI

Last week with the Diplab team, we spent two exciting days at the European Parliament in Brussels, engaging in profound discussions with and about platform workers as part of the 4th edition of the Transnational Forum on Alternatives to Uberization.

Our stellar panel, co-organized with A. Casilli, M. Miceli, T. Le Bonniec and others, featured data workers and commercial content moderators Kauna Ibrahim Malgwi, Noraly Guevara and Sakine B., as well as researcher Jonas CL Valente from the Fairwork initiative.

Together, we delved into the intricacies of the human labor that fuels artificial intelligence and ensures safe participation to social media. Together, we discussed workers’ expectations, concerns and common struggles to move forward toward a world in which where technology serves all humans equally and responsibly.

1st INDL-Middle East and Africa conference

I am proud to announce that our group International Network on Digital Labor (INDL), together with the Access to Knowledge for Development Center (A2K4D) at The American University in Cairo’s School of Business, is organising the inaugural conference of the Middle East and Africa (MEA) chapter of INDL titled ‘Digital Labor Perspectives from the Middle East and Africa.’ Organized in collaboration with the International Labour Organization (ILO), Digital Platform Labor (DiPLab), Weizenbaum Institute and Université française d’Egypte, this conference will be held on May 28, 2024, in Cairo, Egypt.

Rationale

Digital labor is at the heart of our evolving economies. To address the specific challenges and developments in the Middle East and Africa (MEA), we are launching a dedicated chapter of INDL for the region.

This conference provides a unique platform to present research related to the MEA region, both ongoing and/or burgeoning. The conference offers opportunities for scholars and practitioners to engage with topics such as platformization, automation, gig economy dynamics, and technology-mediated labor.

INDL-MEA will feature three tracks: one in Arabic, one in English, and one in French, reflecting the linguistic diversity of the region.

Topics

Submissions must be in reference to the MEA region, for instance: in perspective, case studies, or focus.

Submission topics may include but are not limited to

Case studies examining platforms, gig economy workers, and online digital labor in MEA
Exploring algorithmic management practices in work processes, recruiting, and HR in MEA
Issues of digital platform labor on gender and inclusion in the MEA region
Consequences of the shift to digital labor on workers, businesses, economies, and labor markets in MEA
Effects of remote work and digital labor on employee well-being and productivity in MEA
Policy responses to the rise of digital labor and automation in MEA, including regulatory measures and government intervention
Strategies for organizing digital workers and managing geographically distributed workforces in MEA
Intersectional perspectives on digital labor in MEA
Exploring AI and digital labor through a decolonial lens in MEA
Challenges posed by Generative AI to human labor in MEA

Submissions

We invite submissions of anonymized abstracts for papers, case studies, and policy briefs related to these topics. Abstracts, up to 500 words, can be submitted in Arabic, English, or French through our website INDL-MEA.

Important Dates

Deadline for submissions: January 31, 2024
Acceptance notification: February 15, 2024
Registration opens: TBA
INDL-MEA conference date: May 28, 2024

Together, let’s foster a thought-provoking dialogue and contribute to shaping the future of digital labor in the Middle East and Africa.

For more information, please see the INDL website.

To submit an abstract, click here.

Voices from Online Labour: Inequalities in digital earning activities across countries

What shapes differences in how people get paid, are deemed productive, or receive respect? Alongside traditional explanations of social inequalities such as class, gender, age, disability, race, migration status, rural vs. urban residence, and others, a recent literature highlights the effects of digital divides. The digitally resourced have more opportunities across all life spheres, from consumption to education, work, and health. Ironically, though, digital technologies also generate new vulnerabilities by generalizing low-paid and contingent work. Digital labour platforms like Uber, Deliveroo and Upwork use data and algorithms to match clients with workers, construed as independent contractors, for one-off ‘gigs’ without any long-term commitment. These workers are largely exposed to the vagaries of the market and have limited or no social protection, although increasing efforts aim to bring labour law to bear on platforms.

Growing concerns that platform workers compare unfavourably to conventional employees have already attracted significant research and policy attention. But more remains to be done to fully understand how the recent rise of labour platforms has undermined the relationship between digitization and inequalities, adding a layer of complexity. Scattered, but growing evidence indeed suggests that platforms may be accelerating transmission to digital worlds of ’legacy’ inequalities for example vis-à-vis race and gender, while also fostering the proliferation of ’emerging’ inequalities that diminish users’ agency and augment the power of technology creators and big-tech multinationals. Especially platforms for remote online-only labour change the geographical scale at which these questions arise, projecting workers toward a competitive planetary market that relentlessly selects winners and losers.

To tackle these questions, I’m happy and honoured to announce that I have just been awarded a major grant (almost 570k euros, at marginal cost) by the French National Agency for Research (ANR) for a new 4-year study called VOLI: Voices from Online Labour. As a team effort that builds on a solid record of interdisciplinary collaborations, VOLI innovatively combines hypotheses and methods from sociology and neighbouring disciplines, notably large-scale corpus linguistics (I’ll explain why below), and relies on speech technology and artificial intelligence to tackle the rising economic risks that coalesce around the nexus between online platform labour, digitization, and social inequalities. The project leverages the power and potential of the very digital tools whose societal effects it studies, to develop an original and potentially transferable methodology.

The innovative idea that underpins the project is to tackle the problem through language, benefiting from recent advances in linguistics research and its capacity to recast methods and tools from artificial intelligence in a broad sense – including speech and language technology and machine learning techniques – to capture features and processes that used to escape its traditional methods. Despite the importance of linguistic tasks (such as translation, transcription, writing, and editing) in online labour platforms, linguistic methods have never been applied to the study of these workers before, and thus are best positioned to bring fresh insight. To this end, we have assembled a team composed of speech technology scientists, computational linguists specialized in multilingual and large-scale corpora analysis, and computational, digital, and labour sociologists. Expected results sustain our ambition to devise policy solutions to mitigate the effects of inequalities, and to support the individuals and groups that accumulate multiple sources of disadvantage.

To harness our previous research experience and ensure continuity, we focus on so-called ’micro-work’, the necessary but inconspicuous contribution of low-paid masses who annotate, tag, label, correct and sort data to fuel the digital economy, especially artificial intelligence. Because it is performed remotely and can be allocated to providers worldwide, micro-work differs from location-based platform ’gigs’ such as delivery and transport. It also differs from online-only jobs for freelancers, for example in computer programming and design, insofar as its extreme segmentation and standardization allow dispersing tasks to an undefined crowd instead of a selected individual (whence the alternative denomination of ’crowdwork’). Micro-tasks include, for example, recording one’s voice while reading aloud a sentence, labelling files, translating short bits of text, classifying contents in an image or webpage. They perform essential functions in the development of machine learning and artificial intelligence, from data generation and enrichment to quality controls of automated outputs. We give voice to these workers, often invisibilized by the automation narratives popular in the technology industry, in that we interview them about their lived experience, aspirations, motivations and perhaps regrets; and we rely on their voices as data for the simultaneous development of sociology, linguistics, and artificial intelligence (specifically, speech recognition) itself.

Indeed while bringing to the next level our sociological knowledge of the linkages between micro-work and digital inequalities, the methods that will be developed within this highly interdisciplinary project advance the study of the factors driving speech variation within the discipline of linguistics, augmenting language corpora with rich sets of metadata from sociological surveys, while also building and testing new and improved tools for automated transcription, with potential commercial applications.

I am the PI of the VOLI project which involves four research centres within France:

CREST (S. Coavoux, E. Ollion, P. Präg)
LISN (I. Vasilescu, L. Lamel, M. Evrard)
CRISCO (Y. Wu)
SES Department of Telecom Paris (A.A. Casilli, J. Torres Cierpe),

plus a company, Vocapia Research (V.B. Le, J. Despres, I. Swiecicki), and three international partners:

Weizenbaum Institut Berlin (M. Miceli),
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (J.L. Molina)
Universitat de València (J.A. Santos Ortega).

Brazil in the global AI supply chains: the role of micro-workers

AI is not just a Silicon Valley dream. It relies among other things, on inputs from human workers who generate and annotate data for machine learning. They record their voice to augment speech datasets, transcribe receipts to provide examples to OCR software, tag objects in photographs to train computer vision algorithms, and so on. They also check algorithmic outputs, for example, by noting whether the outputs of a search engine meet users’ queries. Occasionally, they take the place of failing automation, for example when content moderation software is not subtle enough to distinguish whether some image or video is appropriate. AI producers outsource these so-called “micro-tasks” via international digital labor platforms, who often recruit workers in Global-South countries, where labor costs are lower. Pay is by piecework, without any no long-term commitment and without any social-security scheme or labor protection.

In a just-published report co-authored with Matheus Viana Braz and Antonio A. Casilli, as part of the research program DiPlab, we lifted the curtain on micro-workers in Brazil, a country with a huge, growing, and yet largely unexplored reservoir of AI workers.

We found among other things that:

Three out of five Brazilian data workers are women, while in most other previously-surveyed countries, women are a minority (one in three or less in ILO data).
9 reais (1.73 euros) per hour is the average amount earned on platforms.
There are at least 54 micro-working platforms operating in Brazil.
One third of Brazilian micro-workers have no other source of income, and depend on microworking platforms for subsistence.
Two out of five Brazilian data workers are (apart from this activity) unemployed, without professional activity, or in informality. In Brazil, platform microwork arises out of widespread unemployment and informalization of work.
Three out of five of data workers have completed undergraduate education, although they mostly do repetitive and unchallenging online data tasks, suggesting some form of skill mismatch.
The worst microtasks involve moderation of violent and pornographic contents on social media, as well as data training in tasks that workers may find uncomfortable or weird, such as taking pictures of dog poop in domestic environments to train data for “vacuuming robots”.
Workers’ main grievances are linked to uncertainty, lack of transparency, job insecurity, fatigue and lack of social interaction on platforms.

To read the report in English, click here.

To read the report in Portuguese, click here.

Research ethics in the age of digital platforms

I am thrilled to announce the (open access) publication of ‘Research ethics in the age of digital platforms‘ in Science and Engineering Ethics, co-authored with José Luis Molina, Antonio A. Casilli & Antonio Santos Ortega.

We examine the implications of the use of digital micro-working platforms for scientific research. Although these platforms offer ways to make a living or to earn extra income, micro-workers lack fundamental labour rights and ‘decent’ working conditions, especially in the Global South. We argue that scientific research currently fails to treat micro-workers in the same way as in-person human participants, producing de facto a double morality: one applied to people with rights acknowledged by states and international bodies (e.g. Helsinki Declaration), the other to ‘guest workers of digital autocracies’ who have almost no rights at all.

INDL-6 Conference: CfP now open

We are excited to announce the 6th Conference of the International
Network on Digital Labor (INDL-6), scheduled to take place 9-11 October, 2023. The conference aims to bring together experts from various
fields to discuss the latest research findings and share ideas on the
topic of Digital Labor in the Wake of Pandemic Times. Following
long-term technological trends as well as exogenous shocks, the field of
digital labor is constantly expanding. This year’s INDL conference will
be an excellent opportunity to exchange insights and perspectives, as
well as a great way to make new friends among researchers, workers,
policymakers, and practitioners who study the future of work, social
justice, platforms, and artificial intelligence (AI).

The INDL-6 conference will be held in-person at the Weizenbaum Institute
for the Networked Society in Berlin, Germany. It is co-organized by the
International Labor Organization (ILO), the Digital Platform Labor (DiPLab) group, and Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB).

We encourage all interested researchers, post-graduate students, and practitioners to submit proposals that address aspects of digital labor, including but not limited to: gig economy, online labor, workplace surveillance, algorithmic management, AI-assisted recruiting, remote work, employee well-being, inequality, policy responses to Covid-19 crisis, regulation, organizing digital workers, gender and work, LGBTQ+ workers, intersectionality, disability, inclusion, AI, decolonial lens, informal labor markets, generative AI and work.

We welcome submissions that are interdisciplinary in nature and strongly
encourage proposals by researchers and practitioners from the Global
South across all topics.

The Call for Papers is available here and the deadline is 12 April.