0:00:00.000,0:00:09.400 [music playing] 0:00:09.400,0:00:12.200 Hi everybody. Welcome to Data and Society. 0:00:12.200,0:00:13.789 My name is Sareeta Amrute 0:00:13.789,0:00:15.700 I'm the director of research here. 0:00:16.500,0:00:18.688 It's my sincere pleasure and honor 0:00:18.688,0:00:21.731 to welcome you to Data and Society [br]for this discussion 0:00:21.731,0:00:26.172 inspired by Mary Gray and[br]Siddharth Suri's recently released book 0:00:26.172,0:00:32.000 Ghost Work: How To Stop Silicon Valley [br]From Building a New Global Underclass. 0:00:32.200,0:00:36.275 Mary Gray is senior researcher [br]at Microsoft Research 0:00:36.275,0:00:41.007 and fellow at Harvard University's Berkman[br]Klein Center for Internet and Society 0:00:41.007,0:00:43.938 Mary also maintains a faculty position in 0:00:43.938,0:00:46.870 the School of Informatics Computing [br]and Engineering 0:00:46.870,0:00:51.542 with affiliations in anthropology, [br]gender studies and the media 0:00:51.542,0:00:53.713 school at Indiana University. 0:00:53.713,0:00:57.674 Her research looks at how technology [br]access material conditions 0:00:57.674,0:01:01.650 and everyday uses of media[br]transform people's lives 0:01:01.660,0:01:04.280 and today she'll be talking to us[br]about her latest book 0:01:04.280,0:01:07.150 written with Siddharth Suri[br]who is based in Seattle. 0:01:07.700,0:01:08.590 Take it away Mary. 0:01:09.270,0:01:14.730 [applause] 0:01:14.730,0:01:16.537 Thank you.[br] 0:01:16.537,0:01:18.190 Thank you everyone for coming out 0:01:18.190,0:01:21.697 and I see some familiar faces [br]and I just really want 0:01:21.697,0:01:24.280 to voice my appreciation [br]for all the support I've had 0:01:24.280,0:01:25.820 over the years doing this work 0:01:25.820,0:01:28.717 first and foremost[br]to my co-author Sid Suri 0:01:28.717,0:01:30.958 but to all the workers[br]who have given their time 0:01:30.958,0:01:34.570 and let us into their lives[br]to learn about their experiences. 0:01:34.570,0:01:38.280 This work wouldn't be possible without [br]the time that they've given to us. 0:01:38.400,0:01:39.564 So with that 0:01:40.398,0:01:45.299 I wanted to start by giving you a sense[br]of where this work came from 0:01:45.299,0:01:48.569 and for me, I was thinking [br]about my own research questions 0:01:48.569,0:01:51.000 before coming to Microsoft Research. 0:01:51.300,0:01:54.450 Most of them circled[br]around the question of 0:01:54.450,0:01:57.600 how do we become more or less seen? 0:01:57.900,0:02:03.315 How are we known and valued as people and[br]what role do technologies play in that and 0:02:03.335,0:02:08.150 much of the heralding of the internet was[br]that we're going to become more visible. 0:02:08.150,0:02:11.380 We're going to be able [br]to speak our truth, hear all voices 0:02:11.400,0:02:14.900 and much of my grounding in anthropology [br]and critical media studies 0:02:14.920,0:02:18.180 brings me to the question of how so? 0:02:18.180,0:02:19.383 When is that not true? 0:02:19.383,0:02:23.900 and what are the conditions under which [br]people make that more or less true? 0:02:24.200,0:02:27.650 So I come to this project [br]with that background. 0:02:27.700,0:02:29.800 And in many ways 0:02:29.800,0:02:34.410 what I'm hoping to do is incite you to [br]care about this world of work 0:02:34.440,0:02:38.085 that is more or less seen,[br]known and valued 0:02:38.085,0:02:41.210 depending on where you are [br]in this universe. 0:02:41.400,0:02:44.851 It really started with coming [br]to Microsoft Research 0:02:44.851,0:02:48.603 and asking a basic question about [br]how artificial intelligence is made. 0:02:49.100,0:02:50.540 I had no idea 0:02:50.550,0:02:54.044 and so when I started asking computer [br]scientists and engineers in my lab 0:02:54.044,0:02:57.887 what goes into developing [br]algorithms and the models that are built 0:02:57.887,0:03:00.350 to be able to advance[br]artificial intelligence. 0:03:00.350,0:03:03.640 It turns out that there are a lot of [br]people involved in that work 0:03:03.650,0:03:07.340 outside of the coders and the engineers [br]and computer scientists that are 0:03:07.340,0:03:10.890 theorizing these, these[br]technological innovations. 0:03:10.900,0:03:16.060 It's a lot of people who are[br]effectively cleaning and managing data 0:03:16.060,0:03:20.787 the training data that become the models[br]for building algorithms out 0:03:20.797,0:03:25.186 and there isn't a case of any [br]artificial intelligence that exists 0:03:25.186,0:03:30.076 that doesn't depend at some point in [br]someone touching that data 0:03:30.076,0:03:34.407 curating that data and taking something [br]that's otherwise kind of 0:03:34.407,0:03:38.757 structuralist nonsense and putting it [br]into some structured sense 0:03:38.757,0:03:43.240 that a computational process[br]could then model and learn from. 0:03:43.240,0:03:46.900 So at the goal of this book, if there's [br]nothing else you take from this book, 0:03:46.900,0:03:52.024 it's to understand that artificial[br]intelligence always has human hands in it 0:03:52.024,0:03:56.365 that we are benefiting from a lot [br]of people contributing to advancing these 0:03:56.365,0:04:02.177 technologies, even in cases where we might[br]fully automate one process along the way 0:04:02.177,0:04:05.847 particularly as its impact 0:04:05.847,0:04:10.047 or its application to a domain [br]it wasn't expected to enter 0:04:10.047,0:04:13.750 say language, like[br]text translation that's done in real time. 0:04:13.750,0:04:17.820 If you're a speaker of multiple languages[br]and you're code switching 0:04:17.820,0:04:21.400 odds are pretty good that the AI isn't[br]going to be able to keep up with you. 0:04:22.130,0:04:26.210 So look at those cases where you then[br]have to bring people back into the mix 0:04:26.210,0:04:29.500 to be able to develop a model that [br]would be able to capture 0:04:29.510,0:04:31.600 what kind of exchange [br]is happening. 0:04:31.600,0:04:35.626 That's really the beginning of this book[br]is to understand who are the people 0:04:35.626,0:04:39.964 who are doing all of this work and[br]it turns out that when you ask 0:04:39.964,0:04:45.955 computer scientists and engineers often[br]their responses are I don't really know. 0:04:45.955,0:04:49.885 I've never really met these people.[br]The beauty of this technology is that 0:04:49.885,0:04:55.295 I don't have to meet them and[br]I say that now with all seriousness 0:04:55.295,0:05:00.015 the sense is that this is a technological[br]innovation often called human computation 0:05:00.015,0:05:04.785 or crowdsourcing the technique of being[br]able to thread a person into a moment 0:05:04.785,0:05:09.910 of judgment where you need a person[br]to be able to evaluate or decide something 0:05:09.910,0:05:12.765 that a computational process[br]can't quite figure out. 0:05:12.775,0:05:17.563 Bring that person into that moment, that[br]judgment and then threading them into 0:05:17.563,0:05:20.924 a computational process, an automated[br]process so that you can carry on 0:05:20.924,0:05:22.643 with an output. 0:05:22.643,0:05:27.090 So we're somewhat familiar with some of [br]the applications they're little bit 0:05:27.090,0:05:28.860 visible to you today. 0:05:28.860,0:05:30.300 This is an iceberg. 0:05:30.300,0:05:33.300 Most of you are familiar [br]perhaps with your Uber driver. 0:05:33.300,0:05:36.200 You've met them [br]maybe you've chatted with them. 0:05:36.400,0:05:39.125 You might be familiar [br]with other platform services 0:05:39.125,0:05:41.707 on demand services[br]that effectively 0:05:41.707,0:05:44.237 are using the same technology [br]of human computation 0:05:44.509,0:05:47.971 to match a person [br]who's able to deliver a service 0:05:48.260,0:05:51.263 through a mix of[br]application programming interfaces 0:05:51.263,0:05:53.483 that calls that person to the job 0:05:53.483,0:05:54.708 whatever it might be 0:05:54.708,0:05:56.708 whether it's to pick you up at the airport 0:05:56.708,0:05:59.048 or to pick up some food [br]and bring it to your door 0:05:59.048,0:06:01.473 or if it's a content moderator 0:06:01.616,0:06:03.840 And I think what's fascinating[br]is two years ago 0:06:03.840,0:06:07.460 If I'd said the phrase content moderator [br]or content moderation 0:06:07.460,0:06:09.800 I would have just gotten blank looks 0:06:09.800,0:06:13.260 How many of you know [br]what content moderation is today? 0:06:13.260,0:06:17.040 It turns out they're doing [br]an incredibly important job. 0:06:17.040,0:06:19.380 They are people who effectively curate 0:06:19.380,0:06:21.924 look at pieces of text and images 0:06:22.113,0:06:25.474 that are beyond the capacity [br]of any computational process 0:06:25.474,0:06:30.922 to analyze and evaluate and say:[br]ah, that's pornography or that spam 0:06:31.123,0:06:33.400 versus someone sharing information. 0:06:33.700,0:06:36.540 So it turns out that [br]we're not that far along 0:06:36.540,0:06:40.268 in being able to evaluate text and images [br]to figure out 0:06:40.268,0:06:43.700 is that content[br]that should or should not be there. 0:06:43.700,0:06:48.250 You could say anything that's hard [br]for a human to evaluate and decide 0:06:48.254,0:06:54.610 is that misinformation? Or just [br]a fact that I'm not familiar with yet? 0:06:54.610,0:06:58.170 The odds are very good, [br]a computational process isn't even close 0:06:58.170,0:07:00.110 to being able to figure that out. 0:07:00.110,0:07:04.029 If it's hard for a person to figure out [br]it's going to be intractably 0:07:04.029,0:07:09.370 a technically hard process[br]for computation to model. 0:07:09.370,0:07:12.910 You have to have really certain[br]this or that 0:07:12.910,0:07:18.590 yes or no to build code with accuracy [br]to be able to automate something. 0:07:18.600,0:07:21.803 So again take away how much this world 0:07:21.814,0:07:25.903 that's completely dependent[br]on having people at a moment of judgment 0:07:25.903,0:07:31.033 enter the scene like content moderation[br]and then look below that surface 0:07:31.042,0:07:33.784 and that surface below that iceberg 0:07:33.792,0:07:40.374 that is this spiraling growing expansive[br]world of services that effectively 0:07:40.374,0:07:44.899 are building to keep a person[br]in a computational loop 0:07:44.899,0:07:47.891 because it turns out it's [br]much more efficient and effective 0:07:47.891,0:07:52.800 to be able to match a person [br]to a task like captioning and translation 0:07:52.800,0:07:56.991 or a task that might be image tagging[br]for a new set of images 0:07:56.991,0:08:00.791 that you're trying to evaluate,[br]whether it's for training AI 0:08:00.791,0:08:03.520 or that you want to do[br]a marketing project 0:08:03.521,0:08:06.481 in all of those cases[br]all of these businesses 0:08:06.481,0:08:10.780 that are probably unfamiliar to you[br]that are on this on this slide 0:08:10.781,0:08:14.260 are quickly making the best[br]of a business model 0:08:14.260,0:08:26.050 That brings contract driven task-oriented work [br]to people mostly doing work in their homes, or if they're in a setting they're covered by what are called vendor Management systems. 0:08:26.050,0:08:32.299 And again, they're people that you will never meet as an end consumer but that you benefit from every day. 0:08:33.200,0:08:52.100 So when I'm asking engineers and computer scientists about this work of human computation and the role of people in the loop, it turns out that most of these businesses are effectively doing what these Engineers are doing, which is bringing people in as quickly as they can and then moving on to the next project. 0:08:52.100,0:08:58.300 They're not asking who are these people under what conditions might be be working in most cases? 0:08:58.300,0:09:02.600 They're working on contract for that specific task itself. 0:09:02.700,0:09:07.700 So the moment of Engagement might not last more than a few minutes at best. 0:09:07.900,0:09:11.100 So it's a pretty kaleidoscopic world. 0:09:11.300,0:09:11.700 So 0:09:12.100,0:09:13.300 At Microsoft research. 0:09:13.400,0:09:27.500 I feel incredibly lucky to be around people who do reflect on this question of what are they building for the rest of the world and in many cases when I meet a group of people who are saying I don't really know who are the workers who are here. 0:09:27.800,0:09:38.800 There's at least a subset of those folks who will say, I don't exactly know but you know, the technology really keeps me at a distance and then there was a third set that would answer fairly regularly. 0:09:39.200,0:09:49.100 I don't know and I don't know if I want to know and as you can imagine for any anthropologists in the room, that's just that's you really want to pursue that question. 0:09:49.400,0:10:02.300 What makes somebody uncomfortable about knowing who is on the other side of a screen what makes it seem an attractively socially uncomfortable question to find out about their work conditions. 0:10:02.600,0:10:11.800 So when I met said SRI, he was really one of the first people who genuinely coming out of computer science wanted to not only know what we really 0:10:12.000,0:10:21.400 Work conditions people might be engaging but what their lives were like and so we started on this this journey and I don't use that word lightly. 0:10:21.400,0:10:39.000 It took us five years to develop a methodology for being able to bring the value of qualitative critical work that engages people in their everyday lives and figure out where you could integrate measurement and computational analyses to build out a picture of this world of work. 0:10:39.500,0:10:57.600 So often will get this question of well, how big is this Market underneath that question is often people who feel like why should we bother carrying this is worth is going to be automated any day if you buy the beginning premise of this book and I hope you do this work isn't going away. 0:10:57.700,0:11:05.900 The tasks will change but in fact we're building towards a world of a service industry Information Services knowledge work. 0:11:06.000,0:11:07.500 That isn't a niche job. 0:11:07.600,0:11:10.800 This is the dismantlement of full-time employment. 0:11:11.500,0:11:21.700 The dismantlement of full-time employment for anyone who does creative work so we might not be able to see how large that market is arguably. 0:11:21.700,0:11:23.400 We've never done a head count. 0:11:23.500,0:11:37.900 There is no effective way to do a worker census of an environment that is by Design distributed Global and often doesn't have a category of work that people would recognize and resonate with where they could say. 0:11:38.100,0:11:40.700 Yeah, that's me. I do that work. 0:11:40.800,0:12:07.600 So this is both a world in which our old categories of what job do you do is being blown apart and it's a world in which we don't have any mechanisms for tracking and holding accountable the supply chain that's going into this world of work, but let's take some guesses here and some of this is drawing on on economics and the secondary literature about the possible size of this market right now. 0:12:07.600,0:12:11.100 We know that there's about an estimate of 0:12:11.200,0:12:13.600 About five percent of the u.s. 0:12:13.600,0:12:20.900 Population alone. According to Pew that's doing some form of online work so that there are at least in part. 0:12:20.900,0:12:35.300 The work is sourced scheduled managed shipped and build through an application programming interface an API and the internet five percent that doesn't necessarily mean they're doing and their entire job online. 0:12:35.300,0:12:40.100 It means that a form of income that's important to them is coming from one of these jobs. 0:12:40.300,0:12:48.900 Now, this is really striking if you can take into consideration, we've only had the possibility of making an income from this form of work for about a decade. 0:12:49.400,0:12:51.000 So to have five percent of the u.s. 0:12:51.000,0:13:08.700 Population already doing this work start thinking through the size of this Market the growth of this market and if that's not quite enough think about how large the global market for the businesses generating value will be by next year. 0:13:09.100,0:13:11.100 It's a twenty five billion dollars. 0:13:11.300,0:13:18.700 The street already and that's not a small number if you think about how it compares to other industries that are fairly mundane. 0:13:19.100,0:13:52.500 So that iceberg that I showed you all of those businesses that are spinning up on below the surface of our visibility as consumers is building an incredible amount of economic value that up to this point doesn't seem to be moving to the other side of the screen to the workers themselves who are doing the work another projection here of thinking about the implications of dismantling employment is to imagine this is not the displacement or the full automation of occupations and work. 0:13:52.600,0:14:02.800 It's the semi automation of work and being able to task a fi it that is the target of most of these industries and the technologies that companies are building. 0:14:03.100,0:14:11.100 Everybody would like to figure out how to break down things like scheduling managing any sorts of appointments any of your work. 0:14:11.300,0:14:28.900 Low figure out how to break that down and turn it into a task that you can hand off to someone else so that you can up whatever it is that is your main point of view or value right that this is again the object of most of the industry on building out the Technologies at the rate. 0:14:28.900,0:14:33.100 We're going we're looking at 38% of jobs within the u.s. 0:14:33.100,0:14:37.100 Moving to being semi-automated by the 2030s. 0:14:37.400,0:14:51.800 Now that might sound like a shocking number but let's just make it mundane that means taking most of office work knowledge work Information Services and turning it into contract work that's already happened in a lot of places. 0:14:52.000,0:14:54.700 So it's not as though this is so futuristic. 0:14:54.800,0:14:59.900 And in many ways this the goal of this book is to say it is not too late to 0:15:00.100,0:15:05.200 Mine what this world looks like we're really just at the beginning but know that it's moving quickly. 0:15:06.500,0:15:12.000 So the kinds of work that this entails again because it's because you can't see it. 0:15:12.000,0:15:13.700 It's often really hard to describe. 0:15:14.000,0:15:19.300 It's everything from editing copy editing content curation. 0:15:19.300,0:15:38.500 The should be if anybody participates in these kinds of jobs, you might see yourselves in these these tasks taking surveys marketing design any sort of graphic design any sort of data entry and labeling which is a pretty labor-intensive cognitively hard job. 0:15:38.500,0:15:49.400 If you're constantly looking at again data that's coming in that scraped from somewhere with not a lot of context and you're trying to figure out what would you call this material? 0:15:49.600,0:15:53.400 Is this analyzing somebody's attitude about a product. 0:15:53.400,0:15:56.600 How would you how would you assess that attitude? 0:15:56.600,0:16:03.300 It's actually pretty challenging work and it goes very quickly kind of task by task. 0:16:03.900,0:16:05.700 We were studying very specific. 0:16:06.300,0:16:26.500 He's I'm going to just go through a bit of the methodology that we used but we were looking at companies that generate sales leads so you can scrape the web and get an idea of who your contact person might be if you sell air conditioners, but you're going to do much better doing your sales of you know, who you should call in that office turns out generating sales lead. 0:16:26.500,0:16:45.500 That's a particular kind of on-demand ghost work being able to take what is otherwise just a web scrape of people's contact information and curating that list and figuring out who should I contact and then handing it over to a business that wants the best contacts that's a very specific vertical within this industry. 0:16:45.900,0:16:51.800 And then translation Ted has one of the largest projects open translation projects. 0:16:52.200,0:17:06.098 That was the beginning of a volunteer community invested in making videos available for hard of hearing communities and for linguistic diversity, and it was the the heart and soul. 0:17:06.300,0:17:21.800 Amara.org which is one of the companies that we one of the organizations that we studied and then the other kinds of tasks that again are becoming more familiar to some of you content moderate moderation classification tasks that are meant to optimize your search query experience. 0:17:22.000,0:17:25.598 So if you're typing in something and this will happen happen every election year. 0:17:25.800,0:17:29.600 If you have a new candidate up for election odds are pretty good. 0:17:29.600,0:17:44.300 If you've never seen that candidate before they had to do some work to make sure that when people were searching that term searching that name that it matched to the proper biography or persons official presence online. 0:17:44.700,0:17:50.600 So it's it's kind of this renewal of a need for making sure the information is relevant. 0:17:50.600,0:18:06.100 I love the example of how many of you remember a moment during the past elections when Romney made a reference to binders full of women right to be able to figure out should that be a trending topic because if you just think about that phrase that's a nonsensical phrase. 0:18:06.900,0:18:15.600 Aside from who said it and so realize that took a lot of content moderators working very quickly to be able to identify. 0:18:15.600,0:18:17.400 Oh the context for that. 0:18:17.500,0:18:21.000 Oh, it's an election cycle a candidate debate. 0:18:21.100,0:18:25.300 Yes, trending makes sense that's happening below the surface. 0:18:25.300,0:18:37.000 You'll never see it happen and it's not something that can be automated anytime soon as would be my argument and then lastly thinking about these mundane uses of location verification. 0:18:37.000,0:18:39.600 How many of you had a favorite restaurant that went out of business. 0:18:39.600,0:18:53.100 Last month odds are If It Moves somewhere the location needed be re verified and updated within search queries that's still very much the handwork of people below the API. 0:18:53.700,0:18:55.700 So there's a lineage here. 0:18:55.700,0:19:03.100 This is not so new and and we take great pains to point out that the tendency to treat contingent work. 0:19:03.100,0:19:05.800 That seems like it's going to go away anytime. 0:19:06.200,0:19:13.700 Therefore not that valuable and something we don't need to care about in terms of our employment relationships. 0:19:14.000,0:19:47.600 That's old news. So if you think about the experience of the Industrial Age and peace work and the work that was literally something that couldn't be accomplished by the newly quickly moving Loom, but that could be taken to mostly Family Farms and in the United States context and be able to share that material that raw material and the material that's been created say a shirt and to have the button or the flourish of bows that could then be attached by a person. 0:19:47.800,0:19:53.400 That's the kind of work that the entire time the Hope was eventually that will be automated away. 0:19:53.700,0:20:05.700 And yes, eventually the machines were able to attach the flourish the button the bows that didn't mean that the work entirely displaced other kinds of work that needed to be put on the table. 0:20:06.300,0:20:11.000 This could go on for generations and did in manufacturing arguably. 0:20:11.000,0:20:22.600 The only reason automation can knock it out of the park is precisely because you can build the factory around the automated mechanical processes and get people entirely out of the building. 0:20:23.000,0:20:38.300 But in any case where you're working with people and effectively when you're trying to serve their interests and anticipate their needs you're in an entirely different world of required tasks on a person's time and cognitive ability. 0:20:38.900,0:20:57.000 So if you think about the next generation of lineage here and the computers behind being able to put people in space or to be able to do some amazing technical achievements, we've always had these moments where the Assumption was. 0:20:57.100,0:21:01.100 There's something wrote and on Creative about this work. 0:21:01.200,0:21:06.000 It can be done by an often is done by the same suspects generation. 0:21:06.200,0:21:16.300 Generation, but their work is not seen as integral to what is really valued and worth retaining or underwriting through full-time employment. 0:21:16.400,0:21:28.500 So for much of the women who are involved in the Cold War projects through NASA and through other Aeronautics institutions, they were on contract. 0:21:29.200,0:21:30.700 They didn't have full-time jobs. 0:21:31.200,0:21:44.000 They could be they could be released at any point and particularly before it was illegal to fire women because they were pregnant women could be dismissed as soon as they married because odds were good. 0:21:44.000,0:21:45.200 They would get pregnant. 0:21:45.500,0:22:05.400 So thinking about this lineage is important to imagine who is often invited to take on these contract positions precisely because into the 60s there imagine to be the perfect temporary Workforce both able to do the work as in Kelly girls and selling Kelly girls as the 0:22:06.100,0:22:19.100 Opportunity for business professionals to have someone take care of their needs and then quickly exit to bring in fresh Minds fresh bodies for the work that needs to be done around the office. 0:22:19.500,0:22:57.800 So you might see a pattern developing here in this lineage of who is seen as replaceable or less valuable and therefore ripe for contract work as we move into the 90s late 90s to early 80s to late 90s and the internet and connected communication devices allow the workflow of office work that otherwise seemed the domain of professionals from accounting to human resources to any sort of financial services. 0:22:58.100,0:23:06.000 It becomes quite easy to take that work and move it to other continents where you have enough linguistic capacity to be able to 0:23:06.100,0:23:12.500 Take advantage of Labor Arbitrage a cheaper Workforce and still be able to get the work done. 0:23:13.300,0:23:25.200 So what I'm hoping you see in this lineage is precisely the set of assumptions that say who's not so valuable here, who is the person that should hold this temporary job? 0:23:25.400,0:23:47.400 Because we don't necessarily need to care about them too much and what are all of the ways in which contingent work particularly the United States sets in motion a framing of contract work as disposable less important contingency becomes a value proposition to the business not to the worker so 0:23:48.700,0:23:54.400 The way in which we went about studying this and I can go into this in the the QA. 0:23:54.900,0:24:01.600 It's really hard to figure out how to find people behind a distributed system who are working globally in their homes. 0:24:01.900,0:24:17.800 I'll be the first to confess that I'm someone who really likes to find the people that people assume or otherwise really hard to find because it turns out if you just ask people hey, where are those people they'll prickly quickly identify themselves and say, oh I do this work. 0:24:17.800,0:24:19.900 This was a whole other level of Challenge. 0:24:20.200,0:24:34.500 And so the way we went about it was to find four institutions organizations that were producing this kind of Labor and then to figure out ways in which we could meet the workers who were participating in these labor markets. 0:24:35.000,0:24:47.200 We work agnostically with the assumption that this is contract work unless it's otherwise called something else and we worked with the terms of the of the people who are engaging in these projects. 0:24:47.500,0:24:48.400 So we studied 0:24:48.600,0:25:01.900 So Mechanical Turk, which set the Baseline for how most of task-based work is framed and treated and the sidestepping of any legal Frameworks or classification that go with it. 0:25:02.400,0:25:25.600 And then we also looked at the universal human relevant system, which is the internal platform that Microsoft has please note every large tech company has an internal platform that you can't see that's larger than Amazon Mechanical Turk that has far more work than you could ever tracked because when it comes to the accounting of this Workforce, it's effectively the equivalent of paper. 0:25:26.300,0:25:30.000 It's it's not considered labor Capital. 0:25:30.200,0:25:36.800 It's just an asset being bought and sold through a procurement Farm or through a procurement office. 0:25:37.200,0:25:48.400 So I say that coldly because importantly that's part of the legal framework in Arrangements that exist between businesses hiring outside of 0:25:48.500,0:25:55.200 Their companies to be able to have full time labor on tap through other firms that are the employer of record. 0:25:56.200,0:26:03.600 So it's a really important lineage to understand how it pipes into the back of several of these companies the other two companies. 0:26:03.600,0:26:08.900 We looked at organizations that we looked at lead genius is a social entrepreneurship. 0:26:09.500,0:26:26.400 It was a startup founded in Silicon Valley that generate sales leads and they have a global Workforce with a lot of recognition that trying to do the work that they want to have done in the United States is not something they could legally do without being classified as formal employers. 0:26:26.700,0:26:36.600 So they've moved a lot almost all of their Workforce outside of the United States and then a fourth organization that we studied Amara Amara on demand. 0:26:37.100,0:26:44.000 I'm fascinated by a more on demand and the one of the co-founders and organizers of it. 0:26:44.000,0:26:47.200 Dean Johnson is going to join us for a conversation later. 0:26:47.400,0:26:48.300 But what fascinates me 0:26:48.500,0:27:05.700 Now tomorrow is that it started out as a volunteer community again doing captioning and translation of video, which is technically a very hard problem to solve to be able to look at video in any robust way and interpret what are the actions that are happening in that video. 0:27:05.700,0:27:21.700 That's Way Beyond computation right now and this community of volunteers effectively became a magnet for companies that in organizations that wanted to be able to translate and caption their videos in other languages. 0:27:22.000,0:27:25.800 So company started approaching them saying can we just pay you to do this fast? 0:27:26.300,0:27:39.300 So we created a labor market that from it's very beginning was organized by the volunteer energy and the attention to the workers doing the work for this community. 0:27:39.600,0:27:47.700 And I think it's a wonderful example of what we could be doing differently in terms of organizing these worlds of work around workers themselves. 0:27:48.600,0:28:05.100 In looking at these four companies it became an opportunity to start from there and to put out surveys on each of those platforms to be able to reach workers themselves and ask them about themselves and at the end of those surveys to be able to ask them. 0:28:05.100,0:28:17.100 Would you be willing to meet in person for an interview and the map that you're looking at for work that is in theory work that can go anywhere that's available to anyone. 0:28:17.100,0:28:18.700 You should see some patterns. 0:28:19.400,0:28:43.700 There's something that maps onto the infrastructure of Outsourcing of places where there are not many job opportunities that are comparable to service work at retail stores or in other settings where the Pape the payment is about the same as what you might be able to get in these online markets so note the pattern because that should tell us there's something structuring again. 0:28:43.700,0:28:46.100 Who does this work where they do this work? 0:28:46.200,0:28:48.100 What are the other opportunities that it? 0:28:48.400,0:28:51.500 Forecloses or suggest or not available? 0:28:53.300,0:28:57.800 On top of those once we had enough people interested to do the interviews. 0:28:57.800,0:29:03.600 It just turned into old-fashioned anthropology in a lot of ways of go to where the people are meet. 0:29:03.600,0:29:12.400 People see who would be willing to allow us into their lives for a long enough period of time to be able to understand the ebb and flow of their engagement with this work. 0:29:12.700,0:29:34.700 So it becomes really important for example to be able to be in India and see what happens when the monsoon season hits and how people then whether no pun intended the work that they have to do which is effectively being online and having to be hyper-vigilant to pick up tasks that are then delayed by whatever might be getting in the way of their internet access, for example 0:29:36.300,0:29:50.800 The the layer and I you know hats off to Sid for figuring out the ways that he would be able to measure this world because I have to confess I wasn't I didn't really care that much about measuring I cared about if there's anybody experiencing this world that's enough for me. 0:29:51.300,0:29:59.700 And thankfully he helped me see there's a lot of value in being able to understand the distribution of this work the the 0:30:00.000,0:30:05.800 Patterns and so what I want to share with you is really the outcome of merging these two approaches. 0:30:06.200,0:30:27.200 What we found was in this is to me that one of the most striking findings in the book is that there's a real Pareto distribution of participation and when I say that like so many other power laws that are out there it turns out there's a concentrated few that are picking up and doing most of the work in these markets. 0:30:27.200,0:30:35.300 So a good depending on the platform a good ten to Fifteen twenty percent at most are picking up most of the tasks to be had. 0:30:36.400,0:30:40.500 And then there's this Core group of people that we call regulars that first group. 0:30:40.500,0:30:51.900 We call them always on and they literally are they've turned this into an income stream that maintains their livelihoods and they might have other income streams and often they were working on multiple platforms. 0:30:52.000,0:30:56.200 They've turned it into full-time work for themselves the second group. 0:30:56.300,0:31:02.200 There's about 30, you know, 30 percent at most but closer to 20 are what we call regulars. 0:31:02.400,0:31:03.700 They're stepping into this. 0:31:03.700,0:31:08.100 They've sunk the costs of figuring out how to make these platforms payoff. 0:31:08.300,0:31:22.600 They've learned what they need to learn and importantly they've connected with peers much like the always-on have they've connected with discussion forums other people who help them manage and figure out how to reduce their costs getting this work done. 0:31:23.200,0:31:35.900 They are the bench the Deep bench that is always able to step up into this labor market and pick up a task and do it and it is what allows anybody who's always on to step away and 0:31:36.000,0:31:39.300 Not have the entire Market just fall apart. 0:31:40.000,0:31:58.500 There's no way the argument we have here is there's no way to turn this into fully on time always on work to turn it into full-time work precisely works against what it is that people who have entered this world have said is important to them about entering this labor market. 0:31:58.500,0:32:06.600 I'm going to come to this in a moment, but lastly and most importantly there's a good 70% of people who walk into this we call them experimentalists. 0:32:07.000,0:32:10.400 Try it and they're like peace out don't want to do this. 0:32:10.800,0:32:12.900 They have a read of a range of reasons. 0:32:12.900,0:32:14.600 They decide they don't want to do it. 0:32:14.700,0:32:24.300 All of them are still providing value both for the companies that are able to claim that they have 500,000 workers on On Demand. 0:32:25.200,0:32:45.100 So think about any time you've used Lyft or Uber being able to see enough of those little cars that tells you okay, I'll bother that's the value all the experimentalists are bringing to this market and picking up one task or two tasks at is precisely being available that they are offering being willing and available. 0:32:45.600,0:32:52.700 That's the most valuable thing that they're doing and I think it raises this question of and yes, isn't that valuable? 0:32:53.300,0:32:55.300 Why isn't that considered valuable? 0:32:55.800,0:33:01.500 They're bringing an incredible amount of value certainly to the businesses. 0:33:01.700,0:33:03.300 They whether all of the costs. 0:33:03.400,0:33:13.100 These are most cases the people who could not figure out how to tap into a communication Network to make this manageable often felt isolated and alienated. 0:33:13.800,0:33:24.800 So collaboration is key in this environment the thing that allowed people to find their footing to be able to make enough money to make this worthwhile. 0:33:25.000,0:33:31.900 And again, the trade-off being being able to do it on particular terms was tapping into a network. 0:33:31.900,0:33:38.800 This is from an experiment that Sid Surrey and whenever co-authors manian developed to be able to identify. 0:33:39.000,0:33:42.500 What were the communities that people were engaged in discussion forums. 0:33:42.500,0:33:47.300 The different colors are the different discussion forums for this is just for Amazon Mechanical Turk. 0:33:47.900,0:34:00.100 So an incredibly robust Rich nuanced complicated environment of interaction and all of the small dots are this the solitary workers. 0:34:00.700,0:34:17.800 So the vast majority of people who haven't connected with somebody are there still providing value, but you've got this tight cluster and groups who are organizing around specific communities who again really scaffold with each other and make this manageable work. 0:34:19.400,0:34:27.400 I wanted to share this quote from one of the workers talking about how important it becomes to be able to connect with other people doing this work. 0:34:27.500,0:34:36.000 I think the Deep irony here is that the platform Builders assumed this is great work because you can do it alone and you don't have to interact with anybody. 0:34:36.000,0:34:46.199 You don't need any help what they hadn't anticipated perhaps because they didn't have enough anthropologists and sociologists in the room was that people might still be invested and having social connections. 0:34:46.600,0:34:51.000 The social connections are actually incredibly valuable to getting work done. 0:34:51.100,0:35:05.900 It's just immeasurably valuable and that's that's that's part of this environment is figuring out how to recognize the value of that connection the motivators that came up most often in this might sound trite. 0:35:05.900,0:35:17.500 It actually maps on entirely to the literature we have already about how people talk about their work what they value from work particularly when they decide to be self-employed or to try and freelance. 0:35:17.700,0:35:18.100 It's about 0:35:18.300,0:35:25.300 Trolling your time and I'd like everybody to stop using the word flexibility if you please because this isn't about flexibility. 0:35:25.300,0:36:01.900 It's about having other constraints on your time and needing to control your schedule often having to do with Family Care Elder Care Child Care other work responsibilities and other interests having interest in other education other other Hobbies other Joys and in most cases people making doing that calculus of how can I make this kind of work sustained me so that I can make my life run the way I want it to run that's aspirational to be sure but it's certainly part of what motivates people to keep at this 0:36:03.100,0:36:17.900 The second thing they're after is to be able to control what they work on and I'd imagine many people in this room share that they do just about anything to be able to Define what their project is rather than have somebody else tell them what to do and the third is controlling your work environment. 0:36:18.000,0:36:37.000 And if you're pushed to the margins controlling your work environment is not a nice to have so people with disabilities queer identifying people women who felt marginalized by the formal employment opportunities in their area all talked about this work being away of relief from those other constraints. 0:36:38.800,0:36:48.200 So when Carmela is talking about effectively being able to turn the this work because she can then pick up her computer and do it from anywhere. 0:36:48.500,0:36:56.000 I want to take very seriously and not dismiss her claiming that this is the kind of work that lets her live her ideal life. 0:36:56.600,0:37:10.400 It's how do we recognize take that at face value and still remained critical of a system that might still take advantage of her desire to do this work without somehow thinking that Camilla is the problem here. 0:37:12.100,0:37:15.900 So I want to move into thinking about where do we go from here? 0:37:16.000,0:37:28.500 What have we learned from the way these workers not only survive this work, but make it meaningful that we could then use to redefine this world of work because I'll continue to say this is early days. 0:37:28.500,0:37:34.800 We have an opportunity to really Design This purposefully with people at the center of our equation. 0:37:35.100,0:37:37.600 So I want to focus on two things if you 0:37:37.700,0:37:41.200 The book there's a the entire conclusion is just here's what we could do. 0:37:41.300,0:37:55.400 It's my bucket list that comes from the bucket list of the workers we engaged but the one I want to focus on for this conversation is to think about what it means to redefine the social safety net and job classification. 0:37:56.100,0:38:02.000 I'm just going to say it I would like to completely blow up employment classification as we know it. 0:38:02.900,0:38:23.000 I do not think the defining full-time work as a place where you get benefits and part-time work as a place where you have to fight to get a full-time job as an appropriate way of addressing this labor market and particularly if we consider that globally there are so few people in the world who have ever had access to full-time employment that provided any benefits. 0:38:23.500,0:38:37.400 So let's start organizing our classification and treatment of employment with all of the contingent work we've seen in this lineage and imagining that we will be those workers in the future and if that is the case 0:38:37.700,0:38:42.500 The best thing we could do is say there are some Basics here that we're building a Commons. 0:38:42.500,0:38:49.600 We have a labor Commons that every Company benefits from being able to draw from they can dip in and out of this pool. 0:38:49.800,0:38:52.600 So, how are we going to support that pool? 0:38:52.600,0:38:54.400 How are we going to make it sustainable? 0:38:55.000,0:38:57.300 So that the value proposition isn't here. 0:38:57.700,0:39:11.900 Let's just exhaust this pool and drain it because that's a tragedy we know of the tragedy of the commons apply the same logic imagine if health care for all isn't just a nice thing to do because a charitable it's like that makes business sense. 0:39:11.900,0:39:13.500 You need a healthy Workforce. 0:39:13.800,0:39:19.600 You need people to be able to step in and out of it to be able to make it sustainable continuing ed. 0:39:19.600,0:39:26.800 There wasn't a person that we interviewed who didn't talk about how often they were going to online resources to be able to continue exploring. 0:39:26.800,0:39:34.000 What were the kinds of materials they needed to follow up on and choose to read be able to do their neck next project. 0:39:34.400,0:39:36.500 We all benefit from being able to do that. 0:39:36.700,0:39:37.500 Everybody had a 0:39:37.600,0:39:55.900 Baseline of a liberal arts education the should be the big news is a liberal arts education and learning how to learn is the bass bass line for every worker in this market because it's creative work all of us had to learn how to learn as that Baseline and then build from there. 0:39:56.100,0:39:58.100 This is not specialized work. 0:39:58.300,0:40:00.900 This is using your brain all the time. 0:40:01.500,0:40:12.800 So the basic education that comes with critical thinking is key and then being able to make everything else available available becomes critical and then thinking about co-working spaces. 0:40:12.800,0:40:31.900 I just want to leave you with this Vision when I saw all of the home office setups of everybody we interviewed and at the end of the day thought of the health and safety administration and what our workplace around health and safety was set up to do it was to prevent Public Health crises. 0:40:32.200,0:40:37.500 We have a Public Health crisis and people setting up their home offices and not having resources to do it. 0:40:37.600,0:40:39.000 A way that's healthy. 0:40:39.400,0:40:46.200 So I know that sounds small, but every municipality could have co-working space that is thinking public health. 0:40:46.800,0:40:48.800 That's an intervention at the public health level. 0:40:49.000,0:40:54.700 Everybody should be able to get to a space where they can get relief for their back for their neck again sounds trite. 0:40:54.700,0:40:57.500 But if you're doing office knowledge work, it's critical. 0:40:58.300,0:41:01.300 And then lastly I want to dwell on this notion of a retainer. 0:41:01.700,0:41:06.100 So there's a lot of conversation about Universal basic income as a solution here. 0:41:06.900,0:41:29.700 What frustrates me most is the framing of that of that suggestion is that these are the poor souls who can't outrun the robots that doesn't really account for how much what we really need is to retain the cognitive and creative capacity of people to be available to businesses to each other for service work. 0:41:29.900,0:41:37.400 So people should be on a retainer for sure give everybody who's a working-age adults a retainer that says here's your base. 0:41:37.600,0:41:41.900 Line so that you don't have to think about paid leave or unemployment. 0:41:41.900,0:42:05.200 But that literally you have what sustains you to be able to step away when you need to step away have children take care of someone and at the same time know that you are going to have the financial means to get back into that comments right very different attitude than Universal basic income the idea that somehow the poor are going to rise against us. 0:42:05.300,0:42:10.100 And therefore we need to give them some some small amount of money completely misses. 0:42:10.100,0:42:11.800 Where is this economy headed? 0:42:11.900,0:42:13.400 It's a service economy. 0:42:13.700,0:42:20.200 It's an information service and Care economy where we're caring for each other and so to be able to do that. 0:42:20.200,0:42:21.600 We really have to imagine. 0:42:21.600,0:42:28.500 How would we give everybody the basic support financially to do that to be able to come and go in that work? 0:42:29.400,0:42:38.600 So the last thing we have to do is on us if you use any of these Services now is the time and today is a great day to do it. 0:42:39.000,0:42:41.400 There's a strike by Lyft and Uber drivers. 0:42:41.700,0:42:59.300 If you're a consumer of any ride hailing app be thinking about critically if you're somebody who consumes with care if you think about where you buy your clothes or buy your food, there's nothing small about that movement consumer advocacy and boycotting have been incredibly powerful. 0:43:00.000,0:43:27.200 They led to the Bangladesh Accord which was the beginning of holding companies accountable for the long supply chain involved in getting the shirts on our backs and in thinking about agriculture and places where knowing the supply chain became critical to making sure the quality of food, but the quality of people's work conditions growing that food was something everybody could know and then make your choices and that will never be enough. 0:43:27.300,0:43:29.000 This is not a land of 0:43:29.200,0:43:34.600 Businesses be kind to workers or let consumers be self-interested consumers. 0:43:34.900,0:43:41.600 It's about setting up the possibility for the right regulation and classification for employment of the future. 0:43:42.800,0:43:48.000 So the key takeaway other than a I always requires people. 0:43:48.000,0:43:49.100 So we're not getting rid of them. 0:43:49.100,0:43:52.100 Anytime soon is that this is a Commons. 0:43:52.500,0:44:01.700 This is a labor Commons that relies on people coming in and out and what will it take for us to be able to support and value labor? 0:44:01.800,0:44:03.300 No matter where it happens. 0:44:03.300,0:44:10.900 No matter how many hours somebody puts in because in fact the value of these markets it's aggregating up what we do. 0:44:11.500,0:44:17.900 It is literally the aggregation of everybody's input and from there what it's providing. 0:44:17.900,0:44:22.000 So think Uber--it's all of those drivers being available to you. 0:44:22.000,0:44:24.900 It's not just the one driver who took you to the airport. 0:44:25.300,0:44:28.900 So to be able to value all of the aggregation of that labor. 0:44:29.100,0:44:38.000 And say what will it take to say each of the people participating in that are equally important to our livelihoods to our lives. 0:44:38.900,0:44:44.780 And with that I want to thank my collaborators because there's nothing like a book about this kind of work 0:44:44.780,0:44:50.700 to make you hopefully always aware of how much-- everything that went into. 0:44:50.700,0:44:55.802 This book came from an [br]incredibly rich team of people 0:44:55.802,0:44:56.802 bringing a range of expertise 0:44:56.802,0:45:00.575 from Greg Minton, who made [br]the beautiful maps 0:45:00.575,0:45:06.352 to all the research assistants who were [br]involved in doing the fact checking 0:45:06.352,0:45:10.809 to the key research assistants that we [br]had in India to be able to maintain 0:45:10.809,0:45:14.159 the contacts with the people [br]we had met through fieldwork 0:45:14.159,0:45:19.158 so there wasn't a person on this team[br]who didn't do something integral that 0:45:19.160,0:45:23.236 if they weren't here I don't know that this[br]book would be here either, so with that, 0:45:23.236,0:45:24.136 thank you 0:45:24.142,0:45:31.672 [Applause] 0:45:37.888,0:45:39.888 Thank you Mary that was amazing 0:45:39.981,0:45:43.581 I'd like to invite Dean Jansen to [br]join us at the front of the room 0:45:43.581,0:45:45.409 Dean is the executive director 0:45:45.409,0:45:50.242 and chief executive officer of the [br]Participatory Culture Foundation 0:45:50.249,0:45:53.019 The parent organization of [br]Amara On Demand 0:45:53.019,0:45:57.143 co-leading PCF with Aleli Alcala 0:45:59.611,0:46:01.168 Amara is featured in Ghost Work 0:46:01.555,0:46:03.589 and we're thrilled to welcome [br]him into the conversation. 0:46:04.619,0:46:06.738 so as moderator I'm 0:46:06.738,0:46:09.139 gonna take the host privileges of asking 0:46:09.139,0:46:11.677 a few questions of Dean and then Mary 0:46:11.679,0:46:14.799 and then I'll open it up to [br]the floor for a discussion 0:46:15.000,0:46:19.043 Dean maybe I'll start with you[br]if you don't mind OK? 0:46:19.043,0:46:21.524 If you could tell us [br]a little bit about what's 0:46:21.524,0:47:11.051 changed for Amara [br]since the book was 0:47:11.051,0:47:13.608 sure yeah this was a great question 0:47:13.608,0:47:49.972 and one that you know 0:47:49.972,0:47:52.349 thinking about what has changed 0:47:52.349,0:47:55.419 as an organization [br]we've gotten bigger 0:47:55.673,0:47:56.673 When we started and when [br]kind of AOD was first 0:47:58.181,0:47:59.181 starting I think we were a staff of[br]about 9 to 12 people 0:48:03.198,0:48:04.198 the initial group of folks that [br]were doing the translation 0:48:13.232,0:48:13.271 around 200 and today, [br]the staff is closer to 30 0:48:13.271,0:48:13.310 there are thousands of different[br]folks who have signed on 0:48:13.310,0:48:13.388 and her are working with with AOD at this point 0:48:13.388,0:48:13.545 and then as far as [br]just them the marketplace 0:48:13.545,0:48:13.859 that's something that you know it 0:48:13.859,0:48:14.486 when we began there was obviously [br]a robust translation marketplace 0:48:14.486,0:48:15.486 but the audiovisual subtitling and [br]dubbing side of things[br] 0:48:15.740,0:48:16.740 was still pretty nascent and [br] 0:48:16.994,0:48:17.994 that's really starting to pick up[br]more and more today 0:48:18.249,0:48:19.249 so those are two areas that [br]have changed significantly.[br] 0:48:23.266,0:48:24.266 Mm-hmm. 0:48:24.520,0:48:25.520 one thing that Mary[br]talks about in the book 0:48:25.774,0:48:26.774 is this idea of the double bottom line [br] 0:48:27.028,0:48:28.028 and she talks about that [br]specifically when it comes to Amara 0:48:28.283,0:48:28.910 which tries to create fair and[br]collaborative labor practices for people 0:48:28.910,0:48:29.537 who are doing translation [br]and subtitle work 0:48:29.537,0:48:30.537 and so what I wanted to ask you[br]Dean is 0:48:30.791,0:48:31.104 how do you respond [br]to people who say that 0:48:31.104,0:48:31.418 the double bottom [br]line is a nice idea 0:48:31.418,0:48:31.574 but it's really not practical... 0:48:31.574,0:48:31.731 that in fact a business like yours can't [br]sustain itself with that model in place 0:48:31.731,0:48:31.888 yeah that's that's a[br]great question and one that I think 0:48:31.888,0:48:31.966 might be answered well with another[br]question, which is, 0:48:31.966,0:48:32.045 what does it mean to be sustainable 0:48:32.045,0:48:32.672 from organization to[br]organization ? 0:48:32.672,0:48:32.986 Again, in the in the space[br]that we're in, 0:48:32.986,0:48:33.143 in translation, [br]we saw early on [br] 0:48:33.143,0:48:33.300 these kind of more established[br]players that had very high margins. 0:48:33.300,0:48:38.800 And so again, just a question of [br]how do you define sustainability? 0:48:38.800,0:48:39.300 Sustainability for whom and for what? 0:48:39.300,0:48:39.800 I think if you're asking more maybe about[br]the lower margin end of things 0:48:39.800,0:48:40.800 we're talking about some companies [br]that are the biggest and 0:48:41.300,0:48:54.900 most powerful and profitable[br]in the history of the planet. 0:48:55.900,0:49:04.200 And so I think it's a question less [br]– in our eyes at least – 0:49:04.950,0:49:05.950 of "is it sustainable?" and more [br]a question "make it sustainable?" 0:49:06.700,0:49:12.000 I'll just name MTurk as [br]one of those companies 0:49:12.000,0:49:13.000 since Dean was too [br]polite to say it. 0:49:13.000,0:49:14.300 Another question I [br]wanted to ask about is 0:49:14.300,0:49:20.200 really playing off of what Mary was [br]talking about at the end of her talk. 0:49:20.600,0:49:22.000 We can think about consumer advocacy, 0:49:22.000,0:49:35.700 and we can think also about regulation. [br]In your mind from where you sit 0:49:36.000,0:49:36.650 what are the possibilities and limits on [br]what a business enterprise can do 0:49:36.650,0:49:37.300 to value and protect micro labor? 0:49:37.300,0:49:39.500 Hmm another great question. 0:49:42.200,0:49:44.500 I think, well, let's see. 0:49:44.500,0:50:11.400 So as far as the limitations go, [br]I think there are a lot of things 0:50:11.400,0:50:11.650 that organizations can [br]and should be doing. 0:50:11.650,0:50:11.900 We were kind of joking about [br]– not joking but – 0:50:11.900,0:50:12.150 a couple of weeks ago, we were [br]talking about how low the bar is, 0:50:12.150,0:50:12.275 where the bar is to recognize that [br]these are human beings doing this work. 0:50:12.275,0:50:12.337 Early early on when [br]speaking with Mary, 0:50:12.337,0:50:12.400 one of the things that really struck me [br]was her describing conversations 0:50:12.400,0:50:20.000 she would have, as she [br]mentioned, with engineers 0:50:20.000,0:50:21.000 who really didn't see where all these [br]layers existed with human labor in them. 0:50:21.000,0:50:38.400 So to me and many ways the work that [br]Mary and Sid and all the people 0:50:38.550,0:50:39.125 that have made this this book possible [br]all the people that Mary spoke with 0:50:39.125,0:50:39.700 shining a light on it and making it [br]visible as the first step in figuring out. 0:50:39.700,0:50:40.600 I think I've just [br]skipped your question, 0:50:41.400,0:50:47.800 but in terms of zooming [br]out and looking at societally 0:50:47.800,0:50:48.800 what can we do and how can we [br]accomplish some of these things? 0:50:48.800,0:51:02.950 Just that first step [br]of having some recognition 0:51:02.950,0:51:03.950 of who and where people [br]are is really important 0:51:03.950,0:51:04.475 but obviously on an individual,[br]organizational level 0:51:04.475,0:51:04.737 there is a ton that can [br]be be done 0:51:04.737,0:51:05.000 and you give us a few,[br]just a few examples from 0:51:05.000,0:51:12.200 you're sure yeah, [br]so let's see in terms of 0:51:13.600,0:51:26.100 providing people space [br]to communicate 0:51:26.100,0:51:27.100 and work with [br]one another 0:51:27.100,0:51:28.100 one of the things that we [br]found in translation was 0:51:28.100,0:51:28.600 there's this kind of stereotype [br]of the Lonely translator 0:51:28.600,0:51:29.100 someone who is working [br]in an isolated sort of and in many ways. 0:51:29.100,0:51:30.400 That's again, I'm not a translator. 0:51:30.400,0:51:32.000 So this is just my learning [br]and understanding of it but 0:51:32.000,0:51:43.900 historically people do it has [br]been a more isolated kind of work. 0:51:44.500,0:51:59.000 So for us bringing the [br]collaborative side of the tools 0:51:59.000,0:51:59.500 and platform that we're [br]providing and building 0:51:59.500,0:51:59.750 to continue listening to what [br]sorts of things people need 0:51:59.750,0:52:00.000 to do their work better and [br]to collaborate more effectively. 0:52:00.000,0:52:03.600 That's been something that's [br]been the bread and butter 0:52:04.050,0:52:05.050 of some of what we've been doing. 0:52:05.500,0:52:07.500 Thank you being cognizant of time. 0:52:07.600,0:52:11.500 I will just ask Mary [br]a few short questions 0:52:11.500,0:52:12.500 and then open [br]it up to the floor. 0:52:12.500,0:52:16.800 So Mary, one of the key [br]concepts in your book. 0:52:16.800,0:52:20.000 Is this paradox of [br]"automation's last mile." 0:52:20.500,0:52:34.000 Could you pull that out for us [br]a little bit and maybe relate it 0:52:34.000,0:52:35.000 to the lineage of contract contingent [br]labor that you put up for us 0:52:35.000,0:52:35.600 which in your book actually [br]very interestingly starts with 0:52:35.600,0:52:36.200 the experience of slavery [br]in the United States. 0:52:36.200,0:52:49.500 Yeah, I mean, to think about this [br]paradox, in many ways, 0:52:49.500,0:52:50.500 is to grapple with what has been the [br]use of the Lion's Share of manual labor. 0:52:50.500,0:52:51.500 For example, and an early days with you know, 0:52:51.500,0:52:52.000 if we think about what [br]defines modernity, [br] 0:52:52.000,0:52:52.500 – what defines our modern era – 0:52:52.500,0:52:57.600 It's imagining we're going to [br]get our hands out of the soil 0:52:57.600,0:52:58.600 and be able to put [br]our minds to work. 0:52:58.600,0:53:07.000 It's an erudite notion of what [br]does advancement look like, 0:53:07.000,0:53:08.000 what is progress and [br]progress driven by technology? 0:53:08.000,0:53:13.600 And so the paradox is that, 0:53:13.600,0:53:14.600 as we strive to pull [br]ourselves out of manual labor, 0:53:14.600,0:53:24.700 I believe we start recognizing [br]that it actually takes quite a bit 0:53:24.700,0:53:25.700 of creativity and complexity [br]to be able to do any enterprise... 0:53:25.700,0:53:26.700 to be able to do [br]anything productive. 0:53:26.700,0:53:33.400 So starting the lineage [br]with slavery in the book 0:53:33.400,0:53:34.400 is to say, that was really our [br]first labor law in the United States 0:53:34.400,0:53:35.400 it found who could be owned, [br]who could be used 0:53:35.400,0:54:09.200 in a way that only treated [br]their bodies as valuable 0:54:09.200,0:54:10.200 and didn't imagine that [br]any kind of work that we do 0:54:10.200,0:54:11.200 involves a human capacity. [br]Not to be too humanist here 0:54:11.200,0:54:12.200 but a human capacity to be [br]able to bring creativity, 0:54:12.200,0:54:13.200 to be able to bring responding to [br]spontaneity to whatever we're doing 0:54:13.200,0:54:13.450 so that moment of delaying recognizing [br]the value of the real deep integration 0:54:13.450,0:54:13.700 and of creativity with [br]everything that we do 0:54:13.700,0:54:14.200 I believe that is this moment. 0:54:14.200,0:54:16.600 It's this reckoning [br]with a paradox. 0:54:16.600,0:54:21.700 We keep introducing and [br]thinking we're just going to 0:54:21.700,0:54:22.700 we're going to get the thinking [br]and the talking out of it. 0:54:22.700,0:54:28.950 It's just going to be[br]something we can automate 0:54:28.950,0:54:32.075 and then we're just left with [br]things that are really hard 0:54:32.075,0:54:33.637 the professional class will be able [br]to do the really hard work 0:54:33.637,0:54:35.200 it throws to the wind the idea[br]that taking care of a parent... 0:54:35.400,0:54:39.950 if you've ever taken care [br]of an elderly parent... 0:54:39.950,0:54:44.500 that takes a lot of thinking, [br]a lot of creativity. 0:54:44.500,0:54:55.000 There's a beautiful book that sets up [br]the discussion of the paradox 0:54:55.000,0:55:00.250 and it's by Levy and Murnane, they're [br]computer scientists and economists 0:55:00.250,0:55:02.875 who talk about the [br]new division of labor 0:55:02.875,0:55:04.187 and they were trying to analyze 0:55:04.187,0:55:04.843 what is it that a computational [br]process can do that a human 0:55:04.843,0:55:05.500 and what is it that a human can do that is really distinct? 0:55:05.500,0:55:06.600 What is that Division? 0:55:07.000,0:55:12.900 And so we're trying to to theorize why it is as we strive to automate things. 0:55:12.900,0:55:28.700 We keep discovering a new that the capacity to think creativity creatively is in the thick of it and that as we keep pushing to automate and reaching for having something else do things for us. 0:55:28.900,0:55:34.900 We'll keep discovering those bits that are really the heart and soul of what what humans do which is 0:55:35.400,0:55:43.400 Since each other's needs anticipate and I joke often be able to apologize when we get it wrong like computation can't do that. 0:55:45.600,0:55:47.400 I'm going to just as well. The one last question. 0:55:47.400,0:55:50.500 I know there's a lot of people waiting one thing. 0:55:50.500,0:55:52.800 I wanted to underline which I loved in your presentation. 0:55:52.800,0:56:02.300 And in the book is the way that you use the task of Mechanical Turk itself to set tasks to gain to get research for the book. 0:56:02.300,0:56:03.800 I think this is a brilliant methodology. 0:56:03.800,0:56:22.000 So I just want to put a big fat line under that and then and then based on that I wanted to ask you if you could pull out for us the significance for you in doing transnational comparative work, especially as it relates to identifying the challenges and opportunities in labor organizing. 0:56:23.500,0:56:45.400 Yeah. No, I mean I think from the to be clear starting with India and the United States in some ways was following the labor markets that Amazon Mechanical Turk had created by paying in both cash and rupees they had built this labor market by Design without probably much thought certainly about the kinds of work forces. 0:56:45.400,0:57:16.700 It would create and I in drawing that comparison it meant we were constantly able to pull out the places where connection broke down the kinds of nationalisms that would spark around different work groups, for example, so the transnational comparison gives us a chance to see where two people throw boundaries back up and I thought was most striking in India how quickly a kind of panned in the end way of orienting to work across all the platforms also came to the Forefront. 0:57:16.700,0:57:23.000 So the number of women and men who would start referring to each other as sister and brother to navigate the gender politics of 0:57:23.200,0:57:58.800 King and settings with somebody of a different gender the the amazing use of English as a way of navigating linguistic boundaries and what that can mean the meshing and sidestepping of religious and cast differences those complexities could come out and in some ways being able to see the complexities around class and race that played out in the United States in different ways really came to the fore with that comparison the technique of putting the surveys online. 0:57:58.800,0:58:09.200 I think in many ways. I'm really dedicated to us always imagining that anthropology sociology of engaging people's lives means getting in their lives. 0:58:09.700,0:58:19.800 I have a I have a difficult time feeling like stopping at a discussion forum and letting that stand in for people's experiences can answer the questions. 0:58:19.800,0:58:22.600 I'm interested in I think it has everything to do with the question you're asking 0:58:23.100,0:58:27.700 For the most part the question we were asking was what does the rest of your life look like? 0:58:27.900,0:58:41.100 And so there was really no way to ask that without moving from those platforms into the their living rooms into the cafes they circulated in and that that became the the methodology. 0:58:42.500,0:58:46.600 Thank you who would like to ask a question Dana? 0:58:51.200,0:58:52.700 This is Mary's fault. She set me up. 0:58:52.700,0:59:23.100 She was like you have to ask a question was like I was all right ready so much of what you're grappling with is a dynamic that we've seen iterate over and over again throughout history and you've pointed to them by talking about the enslaved people and as a form of contract with in labor markets where different versions of capitalism have evolved in response to these different governing structures, and we keep seeing a regulatory move and capitalism evolved. 0:59:23.600,0:59:49.600 We are now at a late stage capitalism structure where we're not only seeing the efficiencies that are produced by capitalism as as an operating system, but reinforced as you point out by Technical Systems, but we're doing it in a environment to sort of Riff Off of Cerritos point where we're not actually dealing with bounded nation state structures, and I've noticed you're not screaming to tear down late-stage capitalism and maybe a 0:59:49.900,0:59:59.800 I know you but part of it is how do we actually think about the boundary work of nation state structures and the evolutions of late-stage capitalism. 1:00:00.000,1:00:04.000 Something that can actually grapple with this so that it doesn't just keep slipping in evolving. 1:00:06.900,1:00:14.000 Two things popped in my head the last week or so one is thinking multinationals have figured this out in some ways. 1:00:14.000,1:00:34.800 They know how to cash flow and so to take at face value that multinationals generating quite a bit of wealth internationally and circulating it internationally can't figure out how to circulate and distribute the value seems hell. 1:00:34.800,1:00:40.600 No. No, they should not govern know it is the say there's clearly a way to exchange money. 1:00:40.700,1:00:48.700 Globally. I'll just I'll say it flatly like that and that means in terms of governing the revenue generated the redistribution of it. 1:00:48.700,1:00:50.500 That is a global conversation. 1:00:50.600,1:00:56.700 We know that multinationals are regulated in a specific company or in specific countries start there. 1:00:57.600,1:01:05.200 So make the United States make the EU the Battleground for saying new classification. 1:01:05.700,1:01:08.400 Everybody gets Basics go from there. 1:01:09.000,1:01:29.200 I think it's for me very frustrating and realize how many large companies and we're pretty much in a monopolistic, you know World here how many of the large companies that have merged and acquired each other have been able to stay on the sidelines of a conversation around Universal Health Care in the United States that makes no sense. 1:01:29.300,1:01:41.600 And it should be on everybody's mind to be advocating to these companies and it can't be about just advocacy but certainly making the case why are you on the sidelines you benefit from being able to see this healthy Workforce? 1:01:41.600,1:01:57.000 And in fact one way to think about this as Supply chains and good work codes for Enterprises to say there should be a call for regulation that if you are hiring a vendor you should make sure that vendor provides. 1:01:57.100,1:02:01.800 Of care just as you are required or at least benefiting from providing Health Care. 1:02:02.000,1:02:44.100 There's a business case there can it happen without regulation know we all need to say this is ridiculous that we don't provide basic Healthcare and I would I would just keep making that case but the second thing that came to mind is that it really is on all of us to stop letting liberal and neoliberal economics to find the value of Labor to call Labor and Marketplace and not see the moralism within that like, I I'm just going to spell this out just plainly we have allowed people in Elite positions both government and private Enterprise to say that our labor is the same kind of capital as a set of Records or a car. 1:02:44.700,1:02:48.100 We're not durable goods labor means something else. 1:02:48.300,1:02:52.800 So let's stop assuming that the marketplace sets the value of our labor. 1:02:53.600,1:02:56.500 My salary is not coming from some magically. 1:02:57.100,1:02:59.900 Earned value of me on a Marketplace. 1:03:00.000,1:03:01.300 It's coming from Power. 1:03:02.200,1:03:11.100 I have a particular kind of power and privilege to command a price and that is that as a set of irrational power moves. 1:03:11.100,1:03:13.800 It's not the logic of the market playing out. 1:03:13.900,1:03:16.700 So I just I really want us all to start questioning. 1:03:16.900,1:03:19.100 There should be no turn to the market. 1:03:19.100,1:03:22.200 What is the market paying for this task? 1:03:22.600,1:03:32.200 It should be Baseline labor divert deserves support because we need healthy workers to move the world forward. 1:03:32.300,1:03:37.600 I'm a pragmatist. That's why I'm not that interested in blowing up capitalism writ large. 1:03:38.200,1:03:46.600 I don't know you could probably get me there Dana but there are alternative versions of marketplaces like Cooperative marketplaces marketplaces. 1:03:46.600,1:03:56.900 We haven't even imagined yet because we haven't let ourselves think that the market can't set the value of us nor should it and that's why that lineage 1:03:57.100,1:04:03.500 It was slavery. Why would we have ever imagined that the market or a market should Define the value of humans? 1:04:04.200,1:04:12.600 Let's stop that and and and set a Baseline and then go from there perks sure you get perks if you're an extra good worker. 1:04:15.300,1:04:15.800 Yeah. 1:04:18.300,1:04:20.900 Last question one more of those. 1:04:22.800,1:04:24.600 I think I might have a simple question. 1:04:24.600,1:04:42.600 But I'm I'm sort of thinking as you've been talking about people's power and how we might choose a baseline that might be a retainer or some sort of work for all do you think that that might be really difficult as more and more people are doing labor unwittingly. 1:04:42.700,1:04:51.500 Like for example people like Google uses verification to make sure you're not a robot and we're like great. 1:04:51.500,1:04:59.200 That's great. I want to improve on human but you're actually doing work for for that you're doing that task and you don't know that you're doing it. 1:04:59.200,1:05:07.800 So do you think that like Hulu or subscription services are going to start making people do work in order to watch a video and because they want to watch it. 1:05:07.800,1:05:11.000 They're going to do work like in these microtransactions. 1:05:11.000,1:05:18.000 Do you see that maybe killing the labor force to because all the works going to be spread out to everyone that are very willing to like 1:05:18.100,1:05:19.900 Watch their content to do it. 1:05:22.300,1:05:34.600 Really optimistic reasons that I think that won't happen one is that when because when people become more aware that when you check that, I'm not a robot that you're actually doing work for a company that makes a lot of money and doesn't actually make your service better. 1:05:34.700,1:05:53.500 We should all be saying he'll know and and it's not that we're going to walk away from it because we're all enjoying those Services is that we're all going to become publicly aware that that you are having your time taken you are having your time taken without your permission. 1:05:53.900,1:05:56.400 That should never be. Okay, right. 1:05:56.400,1:06:04.100 So one one answer to your question is we absolutely have to have more public awareness of the sheer robbery of our time. 1:06:04.400,1:06:05.600 That's that's happening. 1:06:05.900,1:06:08.100 We make pains the second response to your question. 1:06:08.100,1:06:12.200 We make pains in the book to distinguish between paid labor and unpaid labor. 1:06:12.300,1:06:17.600 And the reason to focus on paid labor is precisely say that is a different relationship. 1:06:18.200,1:06:22.100 It is a social or it's not a charity when you get a job from somebody. 1:06:22.200,1:06:23.700 You are providing value. 1:06:23.700,1:06:33.900 It's a business transaction be cold about it so that we can start living our lives and stop having work Define who we are right? 1:06:33.900,1:06:41.400 Like this is Kathy weeks is one of my favorites on this like, why are we not fighting for the end of work rather than for a 40-hour workweek? 1:06:41.400,1:06:43.300 Hell no, right. 1:06:43.300,1:06:53.000 So let's go there and I think the beginning of it is with an awareness of when we are giving away our and actually I think that's the wrong framing when our time is being taken from us. 1:06:53.700,1:07:03.000 Let's stop saying we're giving it away because our time is being taken from us without her permission and we have to we have to say that's not okay. 1:07:04.200,1:07:05.300 That's the first part. 1:07:07.400,1:07:08.600 Okay last question. 1:07:15.400,1:07:17.100 Thank you guys. This is just great. 1:07:17.200,1:07:46.200 So I wanted to ask about I'm looking at the cover of the book and intensely wondering who is this person and and it but it brings back the question the topic of the visibility of people doing this work and their their relative invisibility and I wondered if you could talk about that and talk about why or how that visibility might be important to the bigger equation of change that you imagine. 1:07:49.700,1:08:02.700 There's not a day that goes by that somebody doesn't tell me about their lift or their Uber driver when I talk about this book and so there's clearly something poignant and and pressing for people when the person that they're worried about. 1:08:02.700,1:08:04.000 Is it right in front of them? 1:08:04.100,1:08:11.700 I mean and that's a good thing and I think in some ways let's tactically deploy that if you're an organizer, I do think we care. 1:08:11.800,1:08:13.500 I mean, I know I'm a roll. 1:08:13.700,1:08:18.500 Was Optimist I think when we see someone in pain we want to relieve it. 1:08:18.700,1:08:20.200 Usually we save that for people. 1:08:20.200,1:08:23.000 We love the most but bar impulses there. 1:08:23.399,1:08:40.500 And so I want to believe that by raising visibility by seeing the people who do this work, but it changes what we want for them the you could just be crass and cynical and say this could be you so don't you want to change your circumstances will absolutely be someone in your life. 1:08:40.899,1:08:42.600 Do you want to see their life better? 1:08:42.899,1:08:44.300 So I think it is for me. 1:08:44.300,1:08:49.300 It's funny you raised that that the cover was actually really I was uncomfortable with that cover. 1:08:49.500,1:08:51.000 I found it sensationalistic. 1:08:51.000,1:08:52.300 I'll just say this. I love my process. 1:08:52.300,1:09:00.000 I don't know if they're here right now. Clearly what they wanted was to get this book and people's hands and they wanted something that people might reach for 1:09:01.000,1:09:03.300 And it might have that effect. 1:09:03.300,1:09:06.300 I hope it does that was their reason for me. 1:09:06.300,1:09:10.600 I'm now on this mission to find out who is he, you know, and I'll get back to you. 1:09:10.600,1:09:13.600 I'll post something I'll find out who he is. 1:09:15.600,1:09:21.700 Yeah, and that is actually a really complicated question because of the end of the day for the people. 1:09:21.700,1:09:28.300 I interviewed there folks doing their jobs living their lives and they're not particularly interested in actually for the folks. 1:09:28.300,1:09:31.100 I've asked, "Do you want to [br]be on any of the TV shows... 1:09:31.100,1:09:42.800 ... I might be on" and the first [br]thing they say is no 1:09:42.800,1:09:43.300 and the second thing they'll [br]say is "I don't have time" 1:09:43.300,1:09:43.550 and the third thing [br]they'll say is...[br] 1:09:43.550,1:09:43.800 "I don't want to be seen as one [br]of those people who's a victim." 1:09:43.800,1:09:58.100 So what I don't really appreciate [br] 1:09:58.100,1:09:59.100 as most of the coverage out there [br]frames the people who do this work 1:09:59.100,1:10:00.100 as victims or dupes [br]or unaware of their circumstances . 1:10:00.100,1:10:01.100 The people doing this work are [br]painfully aware of their circumstances. 1:10:01.100,1:10:03.100 And we would do best [br]by listening to them. 1:10:03.600,1:10:06.000 I think we could just listen [br]rather than need to see them. 1:10:06.200,1:10:10.400 This isn't really about [br]everybody who's had a hand 1:10:10.400,1:10:11.400 in making your [br]social media palatable. 1:10:11.400,1:10:15.800 It's about knowing there are [br]people who are helping you 1:10:15.900,1:10:17.100 and they are working. [br]So how do we support them? 1:10:19.700,1:10:22.800 Thank you very much [br]buy the book so over here. 1:10:23.800,1:10:24.700 Thank you Dean.