The Means of Prediction: How AI Really Works (And Who Benefits)
by Maximilian Kasy · 15 Jan 2025 · 209pp · 63,332 words
farms across the Global South, and whose work in labeling and processing data is an essential precondition for supervised learning and AI. There are the gig workers, in taxi companies such as Uber, and on platforms such as MTurk, and the warehouse workers of Amazon, whose workflow is tightly controlled by algorithms
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it difficult for click workers to become organized and powerful actors that exert control over the development of AI, at least in the near future. Gig workers, such as Uber drivers, also seem to have relatively little power over tech companies, and the same holds true for warehouse workers. For the most
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part, thanks to legal fictions that were carefully constructed by companies such as Uber, the law does not even recognize gig workers as employees, instead labeling them as self-employed “driver partners” and the like. (There are some promising recent changes, however, including the EU directive on
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2024 and the US Department of Labor ruling of January 2024, which might increase the likelihood that some gig workers will be classified as employees.) Because of their legal status as being self-employed, gig workers do not even have the traditional protections of labor law on their side, nor do they have the
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option to (officially) unionize. The type of service work undertaken by gig workers further serves to isolate them, since they do not share a physical workplace, for the most part. Warehouse workers, by contrast, are more likely to
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know each other and to spend time together given their shared workplace and common work hours. Despite the legal and practical impediments that they face, gig workers and warehouse workers seem more likely to exert organized pressure on tech companies than other groups of workers. The same technologies that serve to disperse
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support of local municipalities. Municipal support is again effective in this case because the work in question cannot be easily relocated. Tech workers, click workers, gig workers, and warehouse workers are all directly connected to the tech industry. But AI also has ramifications throughout the entire economy, and workers outside the tech
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fairness. Another important domain is labor law, which can impose restrictions on surveillance in the workplace, and on algorithmic management by AI, for instance for gig workers such as those driving for Uber. These are some of the existing levers that courts and regulators can use to rein in concentrated power over
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–58; objectives of, 55–56; technological advances contributing to, 11, 53–56; text and image generation with, 11, 53–56 genetics, 87–88 geopolitics, 90 gig workers, 101–2, 111 GitHub, 85 go (game), 60–64 Goldin, Claudia, 155–56 Goldman Sachs, 4, 149 Google, 6, 60, 85, 87, 91 GPT-4
Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist
by Liz Pelly · 7 Jan 2025 · 293pp · 104,461 words
, Grubhub, and other precarious app-based work. Selling artists on the gig economy is a particularly perverse dynamic: in some ways, musicians were the original gig workers, and in today’s economy, the image of the free-agent musician who loves what they do, and trades job security for passion projects, is
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today through “creator tools” and “artist services.” When Spotify calls itself a “two-sided marketplace,” it lays bare the similarities between today’s musicians and gig workers more broadly: precarious work where your boss is an app.5 * * * In 2017, just a year before the IPO, Spotify was at a crossroads. And
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, Relief, and Economic Security Act, mobilizing hundreds of musicians to circulate letters to Congress. “That was how we started—thinking, How are music workers and gig workers going to be protected during this time?” Josephine Shetty, one of the original UMAW musician-organizers, told me at the time. The letter advocated for
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…. It’s the same problem, where it’s so hard to organize because you have so many employers.” Shetty agreed: “If musicians are the original gig workers… we have a responsibility to organize within that realm.”7 * * * UMAW’s “Justice at Spotify” was just one of several campaigns it launched in its
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, Musicians Form a Nationwide Union,” In These Times, December 7, 2020, https://inthesetimes.com/article/union-of-musicians-and-allied-workers-organize-during-covid-musicians-gig-workers-rights. 3 Pelly, “With Gigs Canceled.” 4 For an overview of Music Workers Alliance as an organization and its streaming justice work, see https://musicworkersalliance
Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy
by Quinn Slobodian · 4 Apr 2023 · 360pp · 107,124 words
taught that the master is always dependent on the slave. Neither island nor cloud can exist without its underclass. Beyond the masses of app-mediated gig workers, even the vaunted artificial intelligence programs work only because of the often repetitive routines and efforts of labor both skilled and unskilled.78 From Honduras
Gigged: The End of the Job and the Future of Work
by Sarah Kessler · 11 Jun 2018 · 246pp · 68,392 words
complete these jobs, more people sought services, which pushed wages up. For digital-only tasks like graphic design or writing, however, wages of Bay Area gig workers were lower than those of their peers who found gigs offline. Though they lived in one of the most expensive areas in the United States
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fractured into a web of contractors, freelancers, temps, and other non-traditional employment. It was also true of employees with full-time jobs, who, unlike gig workers, were covered under all labor protection laws but had still seen the holes in their safety nets widen. Evidence of what the political scientist Jacob
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world where all the benefits are floating to the top 10 percent.”21 The speech wasn’t exactly about the gig economy: “The problems facing gig workers are much like the problems facing millions of other workers,” Warren noted. But the headlines were definitely about the gig economy: “Elizabeth Warren Takes on
Uberland: How Algorithms Are Rewriting the Rules of Work
by Alex Rosenblat · 22 Oct 2018 · 343pp · 91,080 words
more widely among the driver workforce. HOBBYIST WORKERS Big differences separate those who financially rely on gig work (56 percent of workers surveyed) and “casual” gig workers (42 percent), who report that they could live comfortably without the additional income, according to a Pew Research Center survey published in 2016.19 But
Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice
by Jamie K. McCallum · 15 Nov 2022 · 349pp · 99,230 words
declared officially over.11 The solution to lagging employment growth was an explosion of low-wage service jobs. It was this new servant class of gig workers, low-wage healthcare workers, fast-food employees, maids, delivery drivers, and retail clerks who endured the most intense economic hardship during the pandemic recession. They
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, and by Shipt in 2015. The emergence of the gig economy worsened working conditions nationwide and rapidly expanded the ranks of low-wage, hyperexploited workers. Gig workers are functionally servants: they can act as your personal chauffeur, bring you dinner, do your grocery shopping, and assemble your furniture, all while the impersonal
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the pandemic hit the US, American essential workers also formed mutual aid societies to provide goods and services not supplied by the government or corporations. Gig workers in delivery and transportation industries developed apps to help each other learn how to respond to the neediest situations first, sometimes bucking priorities from the
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likes of Uber and Lyft. The Gig Workers Collective created a simple map that allows drivers to coordinate mutual aid activities like food delivery and medical personnel transport. “Between the lack of financial
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(no sick leave), the number of workers living week to week, and the inability for some workers to take time off due to low income, gig workers are some of the most vulnerable dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak,” their website stated.8 Factory workers in Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, moved into the
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time. The entire rideshare economy—where drivers are independent contractors and not employees of Uber, Lyft, etc.—is an example of a fissured industry. Many gig workers slogged through the pandemic, but most of their services were rendered impossible during the lockdown phase. As they trickled back to work, they found themselves
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. In November 2020, California voters faced Proposition 22. Drafted by major gig company lawyers, its aim was to escape a 2018 state law that classified gig workers as employees rather than independent contractors. UC Berkeley polling had shown that just a year earlier, a mere 39 percent of Californians supported Prop 22
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cash allowed gig companies to monopolize the public conversation and successfully co-opt the message of their opposition. This vote came with serious consequences for gig workers, but it also created the potential to ripple across the entire economy. The law created a new employment category: “the contract
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to Flourish During the Pandemic,” thetechnetwork.io, https://thetechnetwork.io/how-cooperative-gig-economy-companies-managed-to-flourish-during-the-pandemic/. 8. Megan Rose Dickey, “Gig Workers Have Created a Tool to Offer Mutual Aid During COVID-19 Pandemic,” Tech Crunch, March 18, 2020, https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/18
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/gig-workers-collective-covid-19/. 9. Meagan Flynn, “They Lived in a Factory for 28 Days to Make Millions of Pounds of Raw PPE Materials to Help
Hustle and Gig: Struggling and Surviving in the Sharing Economy
by Alexandrea J. Ravenelle · 12 Mar 2019 · 349pp · 98,309 words
on how to best address the differing challenges experienced by Strugglers, Strivers, and Success Stories. In the debate between capitalism and community, the experience of gig workers often gets lost along the way. Workers’ stories suggest that while the sharing economy offers a select few an opportunity to manage a small business
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—find themselves without any of the workplace protections enjoyed by their great grandparents. Although workplace protections still exist for full-time and part-time employees, gig workers, as independent contractors, are outside the social safety net of basic workplace protections. In recent years, the number of workers classified as independent contractors has
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financial edge and who have maxed out, or nearly maxed out, credit cards, the reimbursement delay can be problematic.6 The low incomes of many gig workers leave them especially vulnerable to making poor decisions. Researchers have found that juggling the many competing demands of poverty can affect a person’s ability
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was inadvertently involved in money laundering or was a victim in an overpayment scheme. AIRBNB AND THE RISE OF THE ILLEGAL RENTAL In addition, some gig workers end up in illegal situations of their own doing. Although New York is one of the largest markets for Airbnb, with more than twenty-five
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, many professionals are mandatory reporters, individuals who are required by law to report abuse. But in a servant economy, discretion rules the day. Where do gig workers fall in this dichotomy? Joe’s discussion of the lack of policies in place also raises interesting issues. Although modern workplaces are often ridiculed for
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vulnerability of gig economy workers. In 2017, Virginia senator Mark Warner, a former tech entrepreneur, introduced legislation to test-drive a portable benefits plan for gig workers. The bill asked the federal government to set aside twenty million dollars in funding for organizations to use in order to look at the types
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Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy. Lexington, MA: Digital Frontier Press. Buhr, Sarah. 2017. “A U.S. Senator Has Introduced the First Bill to Give Gig Workers Benefits.” TechCrunch, May 25. Bui, Quoctrung. 2017. “A Secret of Many Urban 20-Somethings: Their Parents Help with the Rent.” New York Times, February 9
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, Julie. 2014. “On the List, and Not in a Good Way.” New York Times, October 16. Scheiber, Noam. 2018. “Tax Law Offers a Carrot to Gig Workers, But It May Have Costs.” New York Times, January 1. Scheiber, Noam, and Mike Isaac. 2016. “Uber Recognizes New York Drivers’ Group, Short of a
Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It
by Azeem Azhar · 6 Sep 2021 · 447pp · 111,991 words
stood out: that the company could count on 3.9 million drivers.45 Not a single one of these drivers worked for Uber. They were gig workers; they didn’t have an employment contract with the firm, but rather were paid, in a roundabout way, for every customer they drove – or every
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more than 1 million rides every single day. Such successes turned into revenues, in 2019, of $14 billion. And that platform growth has meant more gig workers. In the same year in the UK, 2.8 million people were estimated to be platform workers – a shade under 10 per cent of those
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ranked pay and flexible schedule as their top priorities.53 In a similar vein, a 2018 British government survey reckoned that more than half of gig workers were satisfied with the independence and flexibility provided by their jobs.54 If gig work is generally more flexible and less formal in richer countries
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of labour. One way this power imbalance manifests is through low pay. The British government’s survey from 2018 concluded that nearly two-fifths of gig workers earned less than the equivalent of £8.44 per hour, only a little over the British national minimum wage.56 Low pay in the gig
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29 per cent less than the local statutory minimum wage, while workers in France make 54 per cent less than its minimum wage.57 Because gig workers often have to meet their own expenses – repairs, fuel, even uniforms – take-home pay can get squeezed. One study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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rely on court decisions – rather than clear rules – reveals that the gap is far from closing. All of this leads to a growing inequality between gig workers and official employees. The self-employed have always had to face the whims of their clients. But in the Exponential Age, their number could swell
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issue is not just surveillance, but wider forms of automated management. Workers on platform apps have diminishing control over how they work. When dozens of gig workers for Uber Eats gathered outside the company’s office in south London in 2016 to protest, they were not only criticising their low pay. They
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gig economy giants, especially ride-hailing companies, successful: algorithmic management. ‘We are people, not Uber’s tools,’ they yelled. These people and millions of other gig workers are managed by computers. Their work is scrutinised through a stream of quantitative performance assessments. Rideshare drivers may only have 10–20 seconds to respond
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with five or more years of experience might make three times that. On the flip side, there are Uber’s drivers. As we’ve seen, gig workers are often paid relatively little. Your typical driver will make $19.73 per hour before expenses, or $30,390 a year if they drive 40
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the legislative and economic shifts we need. In the absence of quick action by lawmakers, some entrepreneurial outfits are devising ways to directly support workers. Gig workers often struggle to get access to loans and mortgages; lenders look to strong credit records, and the agencies that offer credit ratings prefer those on
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methods can result in a declining worker share in profits. And so we need new ways to empower working people. Workers, whether formally employed or gig workers, need to be guaranteed dignity, flexibility and security – so they can continually adapt to the rapidly changing workplace, without their lives becoming unbearable. The best
Humans as a Service: The Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy
by Jeremias Prassl · 7 May 2018 · 491pp · 77,650 words
when platforms’ innovative use of technology and matching algorithms enable workers to embark on entrepreneurial careers. But the narrative does not hold true for all gig workers: given the vast heterogeneity of work, the reality is inevitably more complex. Chapter 3, ‘Lost in the Crowd’, explores the entrepreneurship narrative, juxtaposing platforms’ promises
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unpredictable from week to week. The promise of freedom similarly rings hollow for many—not least because of carefully constructed contractual agreements, which ban some gig workers from taking platforms to court. Instead of enjoying the spoils of successful entrepreneurship, a significant * * * Platforms as a Service 9 proportion of on-demand workers
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to discrimination protection. Given the intermittent nature of gig-economy work, however, this will not always be enough to rebalance the scales and to counteract gig workers’ inequality of bargaining power vis-à-vis their platforms. We need * * * 10 Introduction to develop existing standards in response to the specific challenges of pre
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UK.18 A report by the RSA, a UK think tank, published in spring 2017 simi- larly estimates that there are currently 1.1 million gig workers in the UK and that approximately ‘3 per cent of adults aged 15+ have tried gig work of some form, which equates to as many
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? There are two steps to consider in turn. First, we need to tackle what employment lawyers refer to as the ‘per- sonal scope question’: are gig workers employees or independent contrac- tors? And who is their employer? At least as regards this first question, there is little need to reinvent the wheel
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to pay and protect their on-demand workforce accordingly. * * * Playing by the Rules 105 A Floor of Rights Classifying on-demand platforms as employers and gig workers as their employ- ees will not solve all of the problems identified in previous chapters—but it’s a crucial first step towards tackling some
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of the most pressing problems facing gig workers, from dangerously long hours to discriminatory algorithms.32 Consider the unpredictability of work and income as an example. We saw how platforms continuously vary all
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shifts, that result from a lack of guaranteed work.40 Rebalancing the Scales What makes the difference between flexibility and insecurity? Inequality of bargaining power. Gig workers are a vastly heterogeneous group. Flexible work ranges from the barrister taking her clients’ cases to different courts each day to the zero-hours agency
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a business, like to provide.74 A recent study by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) reveals how these supposed contradictions weigh on gig workers’ attitudes to regulation. On the one hand, more than half of those surveyed agree that ‘gig economy firms are exploiting a lack of regulation for
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the centrality of on-demand crowds for the gig-economy business model, explored the competing narratives of entrepreneurship and innovation, and charted solutions to restore gig workers’ employment rights. In the final chapter, we take a step back and look beyond the working crowds: what are the implications of the on-demand
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‘strength- ening the basic bargain for workers in the modern economy’, asserting that ‘electronic, automatic, and mandatory withholding of payroll taxes must apply to everyone—gig workers, 1099 workers, and hourly employ- ees’.29 From a technical perspective, few solutions would be easier to imple- ment. Indeed, in Estonia, Uber has already
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gig economy and giving it free unlimited rein. Regulators should focus on the industry’s key ingredient—work—and regulate it as such. By treating gig workers as employees and (most) platforms as employ- ers, we can throw out the bathwater—and save the baby. The promise of employment law in bettering
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potential benefit of all involved: employment regulation is key to a sustain- able future for on-demand services. Instead of provoking mass unemploy- ment, treating gig workers as employees and platforms as their employers will create a framework for productivity and growth. Ensuring the consistent application of employment law in the gig
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Work: Choice, Necessity, and the Gig Economy (McKinsey & Co. 2016), 43), whereas the RSA, a UK think tank, concludes that 74 per cent of weekly gig workers are men—a figure that rises to 95 per cent for driving platform Uber (Brhmie Balaram, Josie Warden, and Fabian Wallace-Stephens, Good Gigs: A
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the labour force: ibid., 69, 73. The RSA agrees that ‘the workforce of the gig economy could become considerably larger—there are millions of prospective gig workers’: Brhmie Balaram, Josie Warden, and Fabian Wallace-Stephens, Good Gigs: A Fairer Future for the UK’s Gig Economy (RSA 2017), 33. Another study, commissioned
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hard work in putting the final product together, but especially so in the context of this book: Hannah Newport-Watson coordin- ated a team of ‘gig workers’ to copy-edit, proofread, and index the final text: thank you, Vanessa Plaister, Jeremy Langworthy, and Yvonne Dixon! Kiryl Lysenka (hired through upwork) came up
Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet
by Klaus Schwab and Peter Vanham · 27 Jan 2021 · 460pp · 107,454 words
gig economy globally has been on the rise, but traditional unions have so far largely been unable to provide adequate answers to its challenges. For gig workers, forming a modern union may be most important. Already, in the US, an estimated 57 million workers are freelancing,48 meaning that they work without
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lead though to despair but rather to a new form of unionizing workers and international collaboration. A good place to start is probably with those gig workers who work exclusively for one platform or in one industry, such as drivers. It is what the Independent Drivers Guild in New York and
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Gig Workers Rising in California do. Both groups gather drivers who work primarily for Uber, Lyft, and other similar platforms and advocate for “better wages, working conditions,
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Maksimovic, Deutsche Welle, August 2018, https://www.dw.com/en/the-new-balkan-dream-is-a-2000-per-month-telecommute/a-45258826. 50 “About Us, Gig Workers Rising,” https://gigworkersrising.org/get-informed. 51 “Court Orders Uber, Lyft to Reclassify Drivers as Employees in California,” Sara Ashley O'Brien, CNN, August 2020
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Dreams”), 60 ByteDance, 61 C Caballero, Sandra, 163–164 California efforts to reduce emissions in, 167 Gig Workers Rising in, 241 Proposition C proposing tax to help the homeless, 212–213 rejected Proposition (2020) designating gig workers as employees, 187–188 Rideshare Drivers United advocacy group, 187 See also United States Capital in the
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, 2017–2019), 84fig well-managed COVID crisis response in, 79 See also East Germany; West Germany Ghana, 27, 70 Gig workers, 187–188, 237–238, 240–243 Gig Workers Rising (California), 241 Gig worker strike (2019), 187 Gig Workers United (California), 241 The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (Twain and Warner), 133 Gini coefficient of China/India
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in, 196 COVID-19 pandemic impact on, 66, 67, 68–69 demographic changes in, 161 economic growth (1980s-2020) in, 66, 67–69, 96–97 gig workers of, 240, 243 Gini Indices on global income inequality impact of, 37fig–38 increasing national income inequality in, 40 protectionist policies and License Raj system
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Indonesia Bandung entrepreneurs story (2012) on MYCL, 93–94, 96, 98, 114 continued trust in public institutions in, 196 economic recession (1997) in, 98, 109 gig workers of, 237, 240 globalization success stories in, 93–99 history of international trade by, 97 IDN Media, 94–95, 114 IT and Internet revolution role
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–Britain), 56 Organisation for European Economic Co-operation and Development (OEEC), 6 Osborne, Michael, 116 Otago University, 222 Oxford Internet Institute (UK), 242 P Pakistan gig workers of, 240, 243 Sheedi population in, 245–246 WHO on unsafe air (2019) in, 72 Palantir (US), 208 Palma, Stefania, 233 Paris Agreement (2015), 150
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, 18, 45fig, 105–106, 116, 119, 134–136, 204 Second Technological Revolution, 45fig–46 Second World War. See World War II Seiner, Joseph, 240 Serbian gig workers, 240, 243 “17 September. Wall Street. Bring Tent” (AdBusters), 39 Sexual orientation, 186 Sham Chun River (China), 55 Shanmugaratnam, Tharman, 123, 125, 229, 232 Shareholder
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capitalism. See Stakeholder capitalism “21st century socialism,” 225 U UAE, 181 Uber (US), 187, 238, 241 Uganda, 70 Uggla, Ane Mærsk Mc-Kinney, 204 Ukrainian gig workers, 240, 243 Ungor, Murat, 222 United Kingdom (UK) Brexit vote (2016) in, 80 erosion of the political center in, 80 First Industrial Revolution (19th century
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dropping voter turnover and social unrest in the, 188 erosion of the political center in, 80 First Industrial Revolution (19th century) in the, 132–134 gig workers making less in the, 238 government debt of the, 30–31 health coverage disparities in the, 43 high cost of health care in the, 227
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