Description
An essential investigation that pulls back the curtain on automation, like AI, to show human workers' hidden labor.
Artificial Intelligence fuels both enthusiasm and panic. Technologists are inclined to give their creations leeway, pretend they're animated beings, and consider them efficient. As users, we may complain when these technologies don't obey, or worry about their influence on our choices and our livelihoods. And yet, we also yearn for their convenience, see ourselves reflected in them, and treat them as something entirely new. But when we overestimate the automation of these tools, award-winning author Antonio A. Casilli argues, we fail to recognize how our fellow humans are essential to their efficiency. The danger is not that robots will take our jobs, but that humans will have to do theirs.
In this bracing and powerful book, Casilli uses up-to-the-minute research to show how today's technologies, including AI, continue to exploit human labor-even ours. He connects the diverse activities of today's tech laborers: platform workers, like Uber drivers and Airbnb hosts; "micro workers," including those performing atomized tasks like data entry on Amazon Mechanical Turk; and the rest of us, as we evaluate text or images to show we're not robots, react to Facebook posts, or approve or improve the output of generative AI. As Casilli shows us, algorithms, search engines, and voice assistants wouldn't function without unpaid or underpaid human contributions. Further, he warns that if we fail to recognize this human work, we risk a dark future for all human labor.
Waiting for Robots urges us to move beyond the simplistic notion that machines are intelligent and autonomous. As the proverbial Godot, robots are the bearers of a messianic promise that is always postponed. Instead of bringing prosperity for all, they discipline the workforce, so we don't dream of a world without drudgery and exploitation. Casilli's eye-opening book makes clear that most "automation" requires human labor-and likely always will-shedding new light on today's consequences and tomorrow's threats of failing to recognize and compensate the "click workers" of today.
About the Author
Antonio A. Casilli is professor of sociology at the Institut Polytechnique de Paris and a member of the Interdisciplinary Institute on Innovation of the French National Center for Scientific Research. In addition to co-leading the research team DiPLab (Digital Platform Labor), he is the co-founder of the INDL (International Network on Digital Labor). Saskia Brown has translated many books from French.
Reviews
"Waiting for Robots, sweeping in its scope but exacting in its analysis, addresses the myriad, often hidden and unexpected ways AI is reconfiguring the nature of work, jobs, and labor worldwide. Written with verve and grace, Casilli's account stands out as one of the most perceptive and critical accounts of AI that has come out in recent times." -- Gabriella Coleman, Harvard University, author of "Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous"
"Casilli's pioneering book, now updated and available for the first time in English, completely upends the celebratory myths about AI. Through a quite remarkable range of international fieldwork, Casilli shows how exploited human workers, usually in the Global South, not only train AI, but often literally do the exhausting work branded as 'artificial' intelligence. A devastating portrait of the realities of the capitalist platform economy." -- Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science, coauthor of "Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back"
"In this brilliant, important book, Casilli upends the standard Promethean narrative that AI is here to liberate humankind from dull, dirty, and dangerous work. He explores, instead, the opposite tendency: tech advances dependent on exploited and precarious labor. Grounded in the stories of delivery drivers, taskers, and microworkers condemned to piecework, and leavened by a sophisticated understanding of the political economy of automation, Waiting for Robots offers a compelling vision for a truly inclusive tech economy." -- Frank Pasquale, professor of law, Cornell University, author of "New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI"
"In Waiting for Robots, Casilli offers a sweeping exploration of digital labor, analogous to Melville's meticulous chronicles of the whaling industry. Casilli takes readers on a provocative journey where human work is not disappearing but evolving in unexpected ways. With a blend of analysis and a subtly wry sense of humor, he debunks the myth of AI-driven job replacement, exposing how human labor is reconfigured and concealed within digital platforms. Bridging history, media, philosophy, and business, this page-turning work redefines our understanding of digital labor and underscores the enduring significance of human work. An indispensable guide for scholars and general readers alike." -- R. Trebor Scholz, New School, author of "Own This!: How Platform Cooperatives Help Workers Build a Democratic Internet"
"This book arrives just in time: in a moment in which the collective has focused its greatest dreams, or deepest anxieties, depending on where you sit, on the imminent reordering of society under the regime of large language model-fueled natural language processing tools such as ChatGPT and other AI-based automation of all sorts. . . . As Casilli reminds us, the 'digit' of 'digital labor' refers to numbers, yes, but it also refers to the digits of the hand, leaving their fingerprints wherever they touch these technologies, as long as we know where, and how, to look." -- Sarah T. Roberts, University of California, Los Angeles, author of "Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media," from the foreword
Book Information
ISBN 9780226820958
Author Antonio A. Casilli
Format Paperback
Page Count 336
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 454g
Artificial Intelligence fuels both enthusiasm and panic. Technologists are inclined to give their creations leeway, pretend they're animated beings, and consider them efficient. As users, we may complain when these technologies don't obey, or worry about their influence on our choices and our livelihoods. And yet, we also yearn for their convenience, see ourselves reflected in them, and treat them as something entirely new. But when we overestimate the automation of these tools, award-winning author Antonio A. Casilli argues, we fail to recognize how our fellow humans are essential to their efficiency. The danger is not that robots will take our jobs, but that humans will have to do theirs.
In this bracing and powerful book, Casilli uses up-to-the-minute research to show how today's technologies, including AI, continue to exploit human labor-even ours. He connects the diverse activities of today's tech laborers: platform workers, like Uber drivers and Airbnb hosts; "micro workers," including those performing atomized tasks like data entry on Amazon Mechanical Turk; and the rest of us, as we evaluate text or images to show we're not robots, react to Facebook posts, or approve or improve the output of generative AI. As Casilli shows us, algorithms, search engines, and voice assistants wouldn't function without unpaid or underpaid human contributions. Further, he warns that if we fail to recognize this human work, we risk a dark future for all human labor.
Waiting for Robots urges us to move beyond the simplistic notion that machines are intelligent and autonomous. As the proverbial Godot, robots are the bearers of a messianic promise that is always postponed. Instead of bringing prosperity for all, they discipline the workforce, so we don't dream of a world without drudgery and exploitation. Casilli's eye-opening book makes clear that most "automation" requires human labor-and likely always will-shedding new light on today's consequences and tomorrow's threats of failing to recognize and compensate the "click workers" of today.
About the Author
Antonio A. Casilli is professor of sociology at the Institut Polytechnique de Paris and a member of the Interdisciplinary Institute on Innovation of the French National Center for Scientific Research. In addition to co-leading the research team DiPLab (Digital Platform Labor), he is the co-founder of the INDL (International Network on Digital Labor). Saskia Brown has translated many books from French.
Reviews
"Waiting for Robots, sweeping in its scope but exacting in its analysis, addresses the myriad, often hidden and unexpected ways AI is reconfiguring the nature of work, jobs, and labor worldwide. Written with verve and grace, Casilli's account stands out as one of the most perceptive and critical accounts of AI that has come out in recent times." -- Gabriella Coleman, Harvard University, author of "Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous"
"Casilli's pioneering book, now updated and available for the first time in English, completely upends the celebratory myths about AI. Through a quite remarkable range of international fieldwork, Casilli shows how exploited human workers, usually in the Global South, not only train AI, but often literally do the exhausting work branded as 'artificial' intelligence. A devastating portrait of the realities of the capitalist platform economy." -- Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science, coauthor of "Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back"
"In this brilliant, important book, Casilli upends the standard Promethean narrative that AI is here to liberate humankind from dull, dirty, and dangerous work. He explores, instead, the opposite tendency: tech advances dependent on exploited and precarious labor. Grounded in the stories of delivery drivers, taskers, and microworkers condemned to piecework, and leavened by a sophisticated understanding of the political economy of automation, Waiting for Robots offers a compelling vision for a truly inclusive tech economy." -- Frank Pasquale, professor of law, Cornell University, author of "New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI"
"In Waiting for Robots, Casilli offers a sweeping exploration of digital labor, analogous to Melville's meticulous chronicles of the whaling industry. Casilli takes readers on a provocative journey where human work is not disappearing but evolving in unexpected ways. With a blend of analysis and a subtly wry sense of humor, he debunks the myth of AI-driven job replacement, exposing how human labor is reconfigured and concealed within digital platforms. Bridging history, media, philosophy, and business, this page-turning work redefines our understanding of digital labor and underscores the enduring significance of human work. An indispensable guide for scholars and general readers alike." -- R. Trebor Scholz, New School, author of "Own This!: How Platform Cooperatives Help Workers Build a Democratic Internet"
"This book arrives just in time: in a moment in which the collective has focused its greatest dreams, or deepest anxieties, depending on where you sit, on the imminent reordering of society under the regime of large language model-fueled natural language processing tools such as ChatGPT and other AI-based automation of all sorts. . . . As Casilli reminds us, the 'digit' of 'digital labor' refers to numbers, yes, but it also refers to the digits of the hand, leaving their fingerprints wherever they touch these technologies, as long as we know where, and how, to look." -- Sarah T. Roberts, University of California, Los Angeles, author of "Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media," from the foreword
Book Information
ISBN 9780226820958
Author Antonio A. Casilli
Format Paperback
Page Count 336
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 454g
