WORKSHOP: CRITICAL AI AND LABOUR: POWER, VALUE CHAINS, AND REPRODUCTION

CRIMT joins OBVIA for this online workshop, where we gather global experts examining the countless workers who are required to help build, maintain, and test artificial intelligence (AI) systems in what Mary Gray and Siddharth Suri at Microsoft Research refer to as “ghost work” and what Lilly Irani calls “human-fuelled automation.” We will open with an inquiry into a power-aware perspective of “studying up” machine learning (ML) datasets. Then, we examine the workers in the global value chains of AI production, and lastly, we expand this by looking at the unsustainable reproductive labour it requires on families and communities. We will end with a lively discussion of possible solutions with the audience and members of the wider AI and labour communities.

Held online on Thursday, 24th November 2022 from:
9:30 to 11:00 AM (Montréal)
3:30 – 5:00 PM (Berlin)
4:30 – 6:00 PM (Cape Town)

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PROGRAM

STUDYING UP MACHINE LEARNING DATA: WHY TALK ABOUT BIAS WHEN WE MEAN POWER?
Dr. Milagros Miceli, Research Group Lead at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society
Associate Researcher, Distributed AI Research Institute
Berlin, Germany

DRIVING THE DIGITAL VALUE NETWORK: ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHIES OF GLOBAL PLATFORM CAPITALISM
Dr. Kelle Howson, Researcher at Research ICT Africa & Institute for Economic Justice
Cape Town, South Africa

HOW ARE AI COMPANIES SHAPING LABOUR ALONG THEIR VALUE CHAIN? A CASE STUDY ON LABOUR DISPLACEMENT, VALUE CHAIN OPACITY, AND WORKERS’ INVISIBILIZATION
Clément Le Ludec and Maxime Cornet, PhD Candidates
Télécom Paris – Institut polytechnique de Paris
Paris, France

EMBEDDED REPRODUCTION: SOCIAL SUPPORT FOR PLATFORM DATA WORKERS
Dr. Julian Posada, Postdoctoral Associate, and Incoming Assistant Professor
Yale University
New Haven, the United States

Convenor and Discussant: Kai-Hsin Hung, PhD Candidate, HEC Montréal