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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podcast
Computer Says MaybeIn this episode of Computer Says Maybe, host Alix Dunn speaks with Data & Society Labor Futures researchers Aiha Nguyen and Alexandra Mateescu, who recently authored Generative AI and Labor: Power, Hype, and Value at Work. They discuss how automation is now being used as a threat against workers, and how certain types of labor are being devalued by AI — especially (shocking) traditionally feminised work, such as caregiving. Read on Computer Says MaybeMarch 2025 -
blog post
Data & SocietyAnuli Akanegbu reflects on the connections between data practices and systemic racism, and offers a set of recommendations — or resolutions — to guide work that prioritizes the humane over the artificial in 2025 and beyond. Read on Data & SocietyJanuary 2025 -
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 -
op-ed
The HillApril 2024 -
Academic Article
Friedrich Ebert StiftungApril 2024 -
event
Data & SocietyApril 2024 -
Press Coverage
Rest of WorldOur new report “The Formalization of Social Precarities” explains “how gig work fits into — and is exacerbated by — existing social issues,” and how cultures' norms around race and caste shape the parameters of work. Read on Rest of WorldApril 2024 -
op-ed
Tech Policy PressExisting labor protections “are wholly inadequate in the face of challenges posed by data-hungry surveillance & AI technologies,” Alexandra Mateescu writes. “These technologies must be understood & addressed as the labor issues they actually are.” Read on Tech Policy PressMarch 2024 -
Press Coverage
ForbesFebruary 2024 -
event
Data & SocietyFebruary 2024