Developers claim generative AI will have sweeping impacts that transform work as we know it, creating new opportunities for workers and unleashing dramatic waves of creativity. But this technology will not affect everyone equally: Societal biases and embedded hierarchies that inform who and what type of work is valuable will also influence how generative AI is rolled out and who benefits from it. Aiha Nguyen leads a discussion with writer and filmmaker John Lopez, sociologist and computer scientist Milagros Miceli, and Rest of World Tech Editor Russell Brandom to interrogate these layers of issues around the technology; consider how it scaffolds on previous economic models, structures, and modes of employment; and explore its impacts on workers across the globe.

Generative AI has seeped into many corners of our lives, and threatens to upend the economy as we know it, from education to the film industry. How do workers’ encounters with it differ from their experiences with other systems of automation? How are they similar, and how might this help us understand the shape and stakes of this latest technology? In this three-part Databite series, Data & Society’s Labor Futures program brings together creators, platform workers, call center workers, coders, therapists, and performers for conversations with technologists, researchers, journalists, and economists to complicate the story of generative AI. By centering workers’ experiences and interrogating the relationship between generative AI and underexplored issues of hierarchy, recognition, and adaptation in labor, these interdisciplinary conversations will uncover how new technological systems are impacting worker agency and power.

John Lopez | Twitter (X): @jedgarlopez 

John Lopez got his start working in feature film production before covering entertainment and the arts for Vanity Fair, The Los Angeles Times, and BusinessWeek, among other publications. An alum of the CBS Writers mentoring program and the Sundance Episodic lab, he has written and produced for such shows as Strange Angel (Paramount+), Seven Seconds (Netflix), The Man Who Fell to Earth (Showtime), and The Terminal List (Amazon). In the run up to the WGA’s 2023 contract negotiations, he also served as a member of the Guild’s AI working group.

Milagros Miceli | Twitter (X): @MilagrosMiceli

Milagros Miceli is a sociologist and computer scientist, leading the research group Data, Algorithmic Systems, and Ethics at the Weizenbaum-Institut. She is also an associated researcher with the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). Milagros’s research is focused on labor conditions and power asymmetries in outsourced data work, examining their impact on machine learning datasets. With a background in ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and workshops with data workers globally, she actively engages communities of precarized data workers from the Global South. Her broader interests include questions of legitimacy and knowledge production in data, worker-led research, labor organizing, and the intersection of critical data studies and data activism.

Russell Brandom | Twitter (X): @russellbrandom

Russell Brandom is US tech editor at Rest of World, where he writes the weekly Exporter newsletter. He has also covered technology at The Verge, Buzzfeed, and The Awl.

What does it take for this technology to exist?

• Milagros Miceli, Adrienne Williams: “Data Work and its Layers of (In)visibility” | Just Tech
• Databite 119 | Mary L. Gray, Dean Jensen, and Sareeta Amrute discuss Gray’s book written with Siddharth Suri, Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass (Harper Business, 2019) 
• The Foundation Model Transparency Index | Stanford University
• Katharine Miller: “Introducing The Foundation Model Transparency Index” | Stanford University Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
• Emilia Davis: “The World’s Biggest AI Models Aren’t Very Transparent, Stanford Study Says” | The Verge
• Nathan Lambert, Louis Castricato, Leandro von Werra, and Alex Havrilla: “Illustrating Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF)” | Hugging Face

What is the economic or business structure that allows for this technology to scale? 

• Russell Brandom: “The Industry Bbehind the Industry Behind AI” | Rest of World
• Viola Zhou, Caiwei Chen: “China’s AI Boom Depends On an Army of Exploited Student Interns” | Rest of World
• Billy Perrigo: “OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour to Make ChatGPT Less Toxic” | Time

What experiences have formed the perspectives of creatives, workers, and unions on this technology? 

• John Lopez: “AI May Kill Us All, but It’ll Never Write a Good Movie” | Vanity Fair
• Gary Marcus, Reid Southen: “Generative AI Has a Visual Plagiarism Problem” | IEEE Spectrum
• Testimony at the FTC on the Creative Economy and Generative AI — featuring Karla Ortiz | US Federal Trade Commission
• Victor Tangermann: “AI Image Generators Are Spitting Out Copyrighted Characters, Raising Possibility of Catastrophic Lawsuit” | Futurism
• Hamilton Nolan: “Screenwriters Won a Historic Victory Against AI. The Rest of Us Should Follow” | The Guardian

How is this technology impacting various workforces? 

• Work and the AI Revolution | Trades Union Congress
• Maggie Harrison: “Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers” | Futurism
• Andrew Deck: The workers at the frontlines of the AI revolution | Rest of World

Who does the audience recommend learning from in this space? 

• Databite No. 131 | Catherine D’Ignazio, Lauren F. Klein, and Sareeta Amrute discuss D’Ignazio and Klein’s book Data Feminism (MIT Press, 2020)
• Members of a 2021 working group on feminist digital justice | Feminist Digital Justice
• Kate Crawford: Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence | Yale University Press (2022)
• Meredith Broussard: More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech | MIT Press (2023)
• Joy Buolawmini: Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines | Random House (2023)
• Timnit Gebru, DAIR, Ruha Benjamin, Abeba Birhane, Julian Posada, Damien Patrick Williams, Pavels Samsonov
• Steven Zapata: “The Problem with AI-Generated Art” | TEDxBerkeley 
• Daniel Friel: The Future of Work in Diverse Economic Systems | Cambridge University Press (2024)

Curation: Aiha Nguyen

Production: CJ Brody Landow

Co-Production: Tunika Onnekikami

Web Support: Alessa Erawan

Design: Gloria Mendoza

Editorial: Eryn Loeb

Additional support provided by Data & Society’s Alexandra Mateescu, Tamara K. Nopper, Rigoberto Lara Guzmán, and Raw Materials Seminar, Engagement and Accounting teams;  Rest of World’s Anup Kaphle; Writers Guild of America West’s Erica Knox and Jennifer Suh; and Ford Foundation’s Ritse Erumi.