Crowdworkers form a growing component of the digital working class as well as the political economy of the Internet more generally, filling in where software fails to find solutions. Working from their personal computers, they constitute a hyperflexible, on-demand workforce which can be accessed and let go in seconds. Many of them sweat over minor tasks which are not (yet) computable by machines but can be solved by a distributed mass of human cognition organised by algorithmic infrastructures. In this function, crowdwork is a crucial, if seldom discussed component in the development, training and support of artificial intelligence.

(p.51) The unequal society that futurists fear wouldn’t come about because the robots arrived—it would be because so few people owned them.

(p.59) the problem with basic income is that it tends to be read as an idea without an ideology

"Social reproduction, when valued by the market, is gendered, often racialized, and poorly remunerated. Where states no longer provided support and where purchasing services on the market was not feasible, the burden of providing additional care and work fell onto families, especially women. In Ontario under the Conservatives (1995-2003), this familializing and individualizing thrust was underlined by a rhetoric about family values and a nostalgic idealization of motherhood and community. As material supports for communities and families were cut, this family ideology blamed families--and mothers in particular--for failing to take responsibility for their members." p. 6

(p.217) Going back to Arendt’s suggestion to “think what we are doing” , I propose to do just that to make sense of the changing nature of “work,” to study what we are doing. Considering whether the activities people engaged in are work or not will allow us to unpack the social and political implications of the emerging activities, new organizational arrangements, and sociotechnical practices they include.

doi: 10.1177/1461444813511926

(p.84)

Putting aside the claims about incremental innovation, what is important for my purposes is that these characteristics of work in CMEs [Coordinated Market Economies] – the use of high levels of skill, combined with the absence of close supervision and opportunities for initiative - correspond closely to those identified in numerous studies as the key sources of so-called intrinsic work satisfaction. By contrast, when work is unskilled, repetitive and closely monitored (especially when this is connected to ‘payment by results’ reward systems), there is little possibility of such intrinsic satisfaction, and hence of work being valued in anything other than...

(p.86)

So what is institutionally favoured in LMEs is for individuals to conceive of their career as something very much ‘their own’, in that it has no essential reference to any specific kind of practice or any particular organisational location, and depends on skills that can be transported and adapted to many different contexts. The career trajectory is highly mobile and fluid, and what counts as success will have to be defined independently of any practice-specific criteria, and hence perhaps primarily in terms of MacIntyre’s external goods of money, status and power. This does not imply the absence of intrinsic work-satisfactions,...

(p.46) Postcapitalism within the context of platform-based sharing economy as we have revealed, may not be an anti-capitalist alternative but it has presented new challenges, insights, and configurations of capitalism. One such expression of postcapitalism that this article has reflected on is the work and lives of Uber drivers. Driving for Uber is a personalized, commercial endeavor, established in the dark spaces that current business models and legislation are only starting to venture into. It does not remedy threats to instability, precariousness or work intensification. Rather, for some drivers, it exacerbates these realities.

(p.2) AI has the ability to affect the workforce in many ways, both as a standalone technology or when coupled with other technologies (robotics, machine learning, blockchain, etc.). This Foresight Brief therefore argues that a governance framework needs to be developed, and one preferably based on regulation rather than ethical guidelines, codes of conduct or standards. Practically speaking, AI systems can impact workers in many different ways: trackers for Uber drivers, Deliveroo riders and lorry drivers; nurses connected with apps and tablets; technicians collaborating with robots in a production line; software deciding who should be promoted next, predicting outcomes and scheduling...

(p.10) As surveillance technologies can lead to violations of human dignity and workers’ rights, monitoring and tracking policies need to be clearly justified and discussed on a case-by-case basis. This must cover such aspects as what is possible, what the limits are, and where and how the data collected from the workforce comes from (for instance, private email, social media posts or offline activity). Moreover, the right to disconnect or the right to be unavailable should be respected across the board, as is already the case in some EU countries such as France.

(p.12) With the development of AI, companies are looking after their own interests by upskilling or reskilling their employees. For workers, acquiring technical skills, although necessary, is not enough. They need to become ‘AI literate’, which is understood as being able to critically understand AI’s role and its impact on their work. This means learning to work alongside AI and to anticipate how AI will transform their career and role at work. Passively using AI systems or tools does not benefit the workers themselves; a certain distance needs to be established for them to see AI’s overall impact and influence.

(p.2) The BS jobs theory suggests that many workers experience their jobs as being comprised of meaningless tasks in which they have to appear productive. As a result some academics writing on the future of work, and the post-work and anti-work traditions, have suggested that if, as Graeber claims, 30–60% of work is ‘bullshit’, radical reductions in the length of the working week could be easily achieved (e.g. Frayne, 2019; Susskind, 2020). It is important to recognise that Graeber is not simply stating that some people have useless jobs but is instead proposing a theory that seeks to explain why these...

(p.3) Our findings demonstrate that while Graeber’s (2018) specific account of BS jobs and managerial feudalism cannot be empirically sustained, his work has uncovered an important and largely unresearched social ill. The scale of the problem is far from that predicted by Graeber’s theory. Nevertheless, millions of European workers suffer from work which they feel is not useful. Moreover, this experience is strongly associated with poor wellbeing. We, therefore, finish our analyses with our own tentative explanation, inspired by Marx’s writings on alienation, for why people think their job is useless.

(p.6) Graeber (2018) believes that when individuals report their jobs as being useless, this is an accurate appraisal by the individual of their job’s social value. This, Graeber goes on to argue, is harmful to an individuals’ wellbeing as it provides little identity or purpose and, moreover, requires workers to pretend this is not the case. Graeber states this is a source of ‘spiritual violence’ that ‘makes clear the degree to which you are entirely under another person’s power’. This is held to be a psychologically damaging experience, because humans need to conceive of ‘themselves as capable of acting on the...

(p.20) ... the empirical data do not support any of Graeber’s hypotheses. Therefore, the BS jobs theory must be rejected. Not only do our findings offer no support to this theory, they are often the exact opposite of what Graeber predicts. In particular, the proportion of workers who believe their paid work is not useful is declining rather than growing rapidly, and workers in professions connected to finance and with university degrees are less likely to feel their work is useless than many manual workers.

(p.21) BS jobs are a rare phenomenon. Therefore, this article debunks Graeber’s (2018) claim that millions of workers are engaged in BS jobs of no social value and that the solution is that they be set free by a universal basic income. Instead, it suggests the need for unions that are willing and able to engage in what Umney and Coderre-LaPalme (2017) term ‘meaning of work conflicts’ so as to overturn those social relations in which people’s work is devalued by toxic workplace cultures that leave workers feeling their labour is pointless and of no use.

“The dominant capitalo-centric framing and imagining of the economic landscapes of the western world overlooks and underplays the central roles that ‘non-capitalist’ forms of economic organisation perform in everyday life. The central role that these ‘non-capitalist’ work practices play has been seen through research undertaken via Time Bank Surveys, and Households Work Practice Surveys. At the household and community level in particular the prominence of non-economic rationales (love, pleasure, enjoyment) that motivate individuals to engage in the domestic activities explored, can be seen interpreted – through an anarchist squint – as examples of anarchy in action.” p. 961-962