On May 6, 2025 at The Greene Space in New York City, Dr. Julián Posada and Aiha Nguyen set the stage for Data & Society’s online workshop “What is Work Worth? Exploring What Generative AI Means for Workers’ Lives and Labor.” Drawing on interviews with Venezuelan data workers as well as peer research and accounts from the field, Dr. Posada’s keynote highlighted three stories that illustrate the socioeconomic conditions enabling generative AI’s development and deployment. His talk offered a framework for thinking about this technology as extractivist — not only of workers but of community knowledge and resources — and how that shapes the ways knowledge is understood, built into these systems, and implemented well beyond cultural and legal boundaries. Together, Posada and Nguyen explored how AI technologies flatten and reduce uniqueness in creative expression, how to redefine who we understand as a data worker, and weighed potential protections for these workers.

Dr. Julián Posada | @posada.website

Dr. Julián Posada is an assistant professor of American Studies at Yale University and SSRC Just Tech Fellow. His research explores the social and cultural dimensions of information, with a particular focus on the relationship between labor and artificial intelligence development. His work has been published in prominent sociology, information science, and computer science journals, including Big Data & Society and Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction. Dr. Posada has established a public profile through his scholarship, including a report commissioned by the federal government of Canada, and his research has been featured in publications including The Economist, WIRED, and MIT Technology Review. He holds a Ph.D. in information science from the University of Toronto and has held visiting appointments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Weizenbaum Institute.

REFERENCES 

• Wikipedia: Fictitious Commodities 
• Miceli, M., and Posada, J. (2022). The Data-Production Dispositif. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 6(CSCW2), 1-37. 
• Posada, J. (2022). Embedded Reproduction in Platform Data Work. Information, Communication & Society, 25(6), 816-834. 
• Posada, J. (2024). Deeply Embedded Wages: Navigating Digital Payments in Data Work. Big Data & Society, 11(2). 
• Hao, Karen. (2022). An MIT Technology Review Series: AI Colonialism. MIT Technology Review.
• Rida Qadri: Research 
• Di Placido, Dani. (2025). “The ChatGPT, AI-Generated Studio Ghibli Trend, Explained.” Forbes.  
• Perrigo, Billy. (2022). “Inside Facebook’s African Sweatshop,” TIME.
• Gray, Mary L. (2015) The Paradox of Automation’s “Last Mile.” Medium. 

RESOURCES 

• “Remote Robotics, or the Digital Re-embodiment of Labour,” by James Steinhoff, Julian Posada, and Alessandro Delfanti. Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation
• Generative AI and Labor: Power, Hype, and Value at Work, by Aiha Nguygen and Alexandra Mateescu, Data & Society

Production: CJ Brody Landow

Co-Curation: Aiha Nguyen, Alexandra Mateescu, Anuli Akanegbu, Siera Dissmore

Web: Alessa Erawan

Editorial: Eryn Loeb

Design: Surbhi Chawla

Podcast Editor: Tunika Onnekikami

Photography: Samantha Isom

The Greene Space Producers: Ryan Wilde, Jade Jiang

Video Engineer: Eric Weber

Broadcast Sound Engineer: Andrew Yanchyshyn

Onsite Sound Engineer: Nadia Othman

Online Hosts: Iretiolu Akinrinade, Anuli Akanegbu 

Onsite Front of House: Irene Chung, Tunika Onnekikami, Alessa Erawan

Thank you to Rigoberto Lara Guzmán, Camille Horton, Joanna Gould, Sona Rai, Joan Mukogosi, Alice Marwick, Livia Garofalo, Janet Haven, and the strategy and engagement, communications, and accounting teams for supporting this event.