How do we value human labor in the context of rising automation and data extraction? 

On May 8 and 9, 2025, Data & Society hosted a two-day online workshop on the intersection of generative AI technologies and work. The workshop fostered a collaborative environment to discuss how we investigate, think about, resist, and shape the emerging uses of generative AI technologies across a broad range of work contexts. We invited prospective participants to apply either by submitting a project to discuss at a workshop session, or as a collaborator expected to engage with the workshop programming. Our 50 workshop participants represented multi-hyphenate researchers, scholars, designers, developers, organizers, lawyers, and artists working across disciplines, spanning the globe, and encompassing various stages of their professional career ladder. The cohort size was limited to facilitate deeper dives with a trusted community of interdisciplinary researchers and practitioners to brainstorm together. Just 15 projects (seven drafts and eight hands-on sessions) were selected to receive feedback, aimed at building connections across common challenges and fields of interest. 

This workshop continued a dialogue we began in a series of discussions last year, where we brought together creators, platform workers, call center workers, coders, therapists, and performers to share their experiences and interrogate the role of AI in their workplaces. Our recent primer Generative AI and Labor: Power, Hype and Value at Work adds to this dialogue by considering how generative AI is shaping how work is organized, how industries are structured, and whose work and what work is valued. As this project evolves, we find that the importance of generative AI aligns with that of AI technologies more broadly, and our work has expanded in scope accordingly.