AI must be addressed as a labor issue, and workers should be part of decision-making in AI policy. Moving beyond common AI tropes and assumptions of mass job displacement, we seek a deeper understanding of how AI is reshaping the value of work, workplace conditions, underlying business models and ultimately, power relations.
Labor Futures
We interrogate how technology is disrupting, destabilizing, and transforming many aspects of work and employment.
Team Members
About
Public debates about “the future of work” are often shaped by hype cycles and industry-driven narratives about the inevitability of tech innovation. Yet these narratives can obscure — or outright dismiss — how technologies impact workers, sidelining and disempowering them and further entrenching racial, gender, and economic oppression.
Our work challenges the assumption that workers are merely passive recipients of technology, and that automation is the solution to a wide range of complex social and economic problems. Through rigorous empirical research and targeted engagement with stakeholders and decision-makers, we aim to create opportunities and levers for workers to shape the technologies that impact their everyday lives. We investigate critical labor topics to shift narratives, expand debate, and inform policy and practice.
Over the years, our work has explored the role of digital worker surveillance and algorithmic inequality, how the tech industry and corporate power are reshaping the economic and political landscapes of labor, and how precarious gig platform models erode labor rights and workplace standards. Today, we focus our attention on applied research, and are pursuing new research on rapid developments in AI and its impact on labor. We are also introducing research that complicates conversations about the future of work by examining issues at the intersection of labor, race, and technology.
Recent Work
Mentions and Press
All Work
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Primer
Data & SocietyApril 2026 -
Primer
Data & SocietyThis new primer shows that understanding how AI will affect work requires examining how work is organized, how industries are structured, and whose and what work is valued. Read moreDecember 2024 -
Primer
Data & SocietyWellness Capitalism: Employee Health, the Benefits Maze, and Worker Control explores how employee wellness has been promoted in the US through public policies and government support, and how this has led to a rapidly expanding, data-collecting industry. Read moreJune 2023 -
Primer
Data & SocietyTechnology enables employers to increasingly monitor their employees. This explainer by Alexandra Mateescu and Aiha Nguyen identifies four current trends in workplace monitoring and surveillance: prediction and flagging tools; biometrics and health data; remote monitoring and time-tracking; and gamification and algorithmic management. Read moreFebruary 2019 -
Primer
Data & SocietyThis explainer by Alexandra Mateescu and Aiha Nguyen defines algorithmic management and reviews how this concept challenges workers’ rights in sectors, including retail, the service industry, and delivery and logistics. The authors outline existing research on the ways that algorithmic management is manifesting across various labor industries, shifting workplace power dynamics, and putting workers at a disadvantage. It can enable increased surveillance and control while removing transparency. Read moreFebruary 2019