Subjection of Labor or Emancipation From Work? Media Workers Respond to the Perils and Promises of AI

Rajeev Ravisankar

University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication

Abstract

Digital technologies and platforms have transformed and destabilized the nature of work across sectors and job settings. Most recently, generative artificial intelligence has rapidly proliferated and is projected to have far more disruptive effects. The investment firm Goldman Sachs projected that generative AI could potentially displace as many as 300 million jobs due to automation, and AI capabilities that match and potentially exceed human labor are already being developed. Advances in AI come at a time when work lives are increasingly marked by algorithmic control and digital surveillance, whether for office workers or gig workers or those involved in product distribution and delivery. Situating these developments in the broader history of labor and technology shows how the immense power imbalance between labor and capital has shaped how labor-saving technologies are implemented. The promise of shorter workdays and workweeks and more leisure time has not materialized and instead has given way to new forms of subjection and subordination of labor.

The project grapples with this rapidly changing digital environment from the vantage point of how workers and labor organizations have responded. Immediate and anticipated impacts of AI on the labor process and media industries will be assessed by drawing on accounts from media workers. For Hollywood actors and writers, video game performers, and journalists, AI became a major point of contention in negotiations, and the unions representing them have sought contractual constraints and safeguards on how the technology could be used. However, the pace of AI and digital technology advance outstrips the typical timeline of negotiating a collective bargaining agreement, which points to the need to explore the possibilities and limitations of labor negotiations in securing protections going forward. Finally, the prospects for cooperative and public ownership models will be explored as avenues for working-class people to exert greater control over the digital infrastructure that governs their lives. The project aims to critically engage with a range of concerns related to AI and digital technologies to develop a deeper understanding of the implications for workers, labor organizing, and society at large.

Keywords

Labor; media workers; AI; technology