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In their recently published book, Against Tech Oligarchy: Worker Resistance in the World’s Most Powerful Industry, JS Tan and Clarissa Redwine describe the nascent push for collective organizing in the tech sector, based on their experiences in tech industry and interviews with other organizers. In this excerpt, they highlight the importance of conflict in union building and how tech companies undermine unionization drives.
Clarissa Redwine helped organize the Kickstarter union, and has since dedicated herself to organizing the industry. She cofounded and runs the annual tech organizing conference Circuit Breakers. Redwine’s new book […]
JS Tan is a PhD student at MIT in the international development group at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), and he’s part of the Political Economy Lab. […]
Yifan Miller is a postdoctoral research associate with the Center for Transformative Media at Northeastern University. She received her PhD in organizational communication and technology from The University of Texas […]
Many hours of frustrating and long hours of work energize the robots we all see walking independently and performing menial tasks online. However, the engineers behind the scenes are rarely acknowledged, even when they control those robots just off camera. In this essay, Yifan Miller gives us a peek behind the curtain, showing the hidden labor that goes into making machines autonomous. In doing so, she raises important questions about cost of labor, allocation of resources, and accountability.
Mishal Khan is a senior researcher in the Technology and Work Program at the University of California Berkeley Labor Center. With a doctoral degree in sociology from the University of […]
With the proliferation of AI in the workforce labor advocates, workers, and the public at large have started pushing for protections against AI overreach in different employment sectors. Here, Mishal Khan looks at the myriad approaches to one of these types of protections: human-in-the-loop provisions. While many states have passed different versions of these provisions, Khan cautions against a complacency that allows these provisions to co-opt workers rather than centering them.
As artificial intelligence technologies proliferate in use and advance in capabilities, many countries in Africa risk falling behind. Here, Chinasa T. Okolo, a researcher and policy advisor on AI and digital technologies, outlines Africa’s current position in the broader geopolitical competition for AI dominance, examining how Western powers, China, Russia, and others are vying for influence in the continent. She argues that African leaders must balance the local technological development, foreign investment, and national independence.
Odest Chadwicke “Chad” Jenkins is a professor of robotics and a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan. He leads the Laboratory for Progress (Perceptive […]
Sarah Mosseri’s recent book, Trust Fall: How Workplace Relationships Fail Us, examines how both office and interactive service workers rely on interpersonal ties as improvised infrastructures for navigating insecurity. Though the trust that emerges feels sustaining, it often perpetuates unequal and opaque organizational systems. In this excerpt of the book’s final empirical chapter, Mosseri looks at the workplace relations among New York City’s ride-hail drivers and how they nurture a culture of solidarity built on class consciousness and collective grievances that have allowed them to win improvements from tech companies.
Sarah Mosseri is a sociologist specializing in labor, inequality, and the hidden dynamics of workplace culture, with a PhD from the University of Virginia and a Courtesy Fellowship with Johns […]