Mapping Data Work

Data work undergirds much of the digital infrastructures that we use every day. Content moderation on online platforms or the 'AI revolution' more broadly hinge on often exploited and invisibilised human labour. This panel foregrounds the issues and struggles of data work in a European context.

The panel will build on themes that were uncovered and explored in an earlier workshop involving civil society, policymakers, data workers and academics organised in Bangalore, India: the opacity of global AI supply chains, gendered and precarious nature of annotation and moderation work, historical continuities in outsourced labour, emerging forms of worker organizing, and the epistemic implications of AI systems.

Europe is perceived to play a significant role in shaping the governance and political economy of digital technologies. Notions such as the 'Brussels Effect', 'Sovereign AI' or 'Public AI' suggest a form of normative leadership, invoking alternative approaches to AI more closely grounded in public values. At the same time, comparatively little attention has been paid to the labour and supply chains that underpin these systems, which are then naturalized as an inevitable feature of the industry and placed outside the scope of debates related to AI.

In this event, we will focus on themes like the opacity of global AI supply chains, gendered and precarious nature of annotation and moderation work, historical continuities in outsourced labour, emerging forms of worker organizing, and the epistemic implications of AI systems.

Firmly rooted in practice, the speakers will talk about on-the-ground issues and organising and connecting it to European-level policy discussions. As such, the panel will zoom into material realities that ostensibly clash with the EU's self-congratulatory digital policy agenda.

SPEAKERS

Dr. Sana Ahmad is a Senior Researcher at the Weizenbaum Institute in Berlin, interested in work and labor relations, with a particular focus on how digitalisation and automation are transforming labor processes, employment relations, and power relations. Her recent projects include Responsible AI, voluntary standards and labour governance in global value chains, as well as research on labour subjectivity and agency.

Margarida Silva is a researcher at SOMO, an Amsterdam based organisation that investigates multinational corporations. There, she focuses on the power and impact of Big Tech companies such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Her recent research covered Big Tech's Global Lobby Playbook and Big Tech's impact on AI data workers.

Andreas Hänisch is Chairman of the TikTok Works Council in Berlin and Chairman of TikTok's General Works Council in Germany. Since its establishment in October 2022, the Works Council has represented the interests of more than 400 colleagues, with a particular focus on working conditions for in-house content moderators. Andreas joined TikTok in 2019, following four years at Spotify. Alongside his role at…