Behind the Scenes of Automation:
Ghostly Care-Work, Maintenance, and Interference

CHI 2023 Hybrid workshop W14 (Hamburg / online), Room X05

Friday, 28 April, 2023

 

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

Industry and media have long represented automation as a harbinger of development and convenience in different areas of life. What remains behind the scenes of these predictions and imaginaries of automation is the invisible human labor of global ghost workers caring for, maintaining, and repairing technologies. Invisible but irreplaceable, computation performed by humans in precarious conditions fills gaps that computer technologies lack skills and sensibility for. In this one-day hybrid workshop, we ask who the “ghosts” are in the machines.

The workshop will address the ghostly presence of humans and human labor in automation and its challenges to HCI research and design. Additionally, it aims to explore methods to collectively create a multidisciplinary map, offering a stage to ghostly care work, maintenance, and interferences.

In line with the overarching goals, the workshop will ask the following questions:

  • How might HCI and HRI research unveil and respond to hidden labor in automation and AI, and understand the global, transnational, and postcolonial relations behind it?

  • How do different theories, concepts, and methods enable us to study and design human-automation systems?

  • What values and ethical principles need to be considered when studying and revealing ghostly automation?

  • How can biased assumptions of whose work and what kind of work should be automatized be further challenged?

  • How can examining and challenging the othering effects of ghost work help HCI scholars, activists, and practitioners mitigate the proliferation of the “AI hype”?

  • How do we think about a future where multiple hauntings of automation become visible and can co-exist?

  • What actionable steps and commitments can HCI scholars adopt to expose the conditions of hidden labor in AI and intervene in ways that lead to more socially equitable outcomes?

Read the full workshop call here.

WORKSHOP SCHEDULE

TIME & ACTIVITY | all times - Central European Time (CET)

8:30 - 9:00 am | Arrival & Setup

9:00 – 9:15 am | Welcome — Introduction & workshop overview

9:15 - 10:30 am | Paper session 1 “Ghosts of labor outsourcing & national schemes”

Tianling Yang, Technische Universität Berlin, Hidden Labor in Crowdwork: An Autoethnographic Investigation in a Chinese Crowdsourcing Platform - in-person

Ben Zefeng Zhang, Oliver L. Haimson, & Michaelanne Thomas, University of Michigan, The Labor of Training Artificial Intelligence: Data Infrastructure, Mobility, and Marginality - in-person

Gesu India, Swansea University, Persons with Disabilities as Ghost Workers in India - in-person

Josephine Seah, University of Cambridge, Translators of the Smart City - virtual

10:30 - 11:00 am | Coffee break (coffee, tea, & light vegetarian snacks), Foyer X & Y

11:00 am - 12:15 pm | Paper session 2 “Research as site of invisible labor & research methods”

Sarah R. Davies, University of Vienna, Ghost work in the biosciences: Biocuration, automation, and (gendered) human labour - virtual

Anna Dobrosovestnova & Janis Lena Meissner, TU Wien, Care, Censorship and the Challenges of Researching Digital Work  - in-person

Benedikt Haupt, Alexa Becker, & Christian Pentzold, Leipzig University, How Co-Desigining Automated Future Homes Can Uncover “Ghost Work” - in-person

Goda Klumbyte, Hannah Piehl, & Claude Draude, University of Kassel, Explaining the ghosts: Feminist intersectional XAI and cartography as methods to account for invisible labour - virtual

12:15 – 12:30 pm | Brief recap & review of mapping activities from first two sessions

12:30 - 2:00 pm | Lunch (outside CHI venue, self-organized)

2:00 - 2:15 pm | Recap morning sessions

2:15 - 3:30 pm | Paper session 3 “Ghost labor organization & art”

Susanne Poeller, Martin Dechant, & Maximilian Friehs, University of Saskatchewan / University College London / University of Twente, Art-ificial Intelligence: The Intersection of Art and Technology and How Those Who Made it Possible Are Being Left Behind - in-person & virtual

Viktoria Pammer-Schindler, Graz University of Technology, Austria & Know-Center GmbH, Building, fixing and learning how to fix things in the face of automation - virtual

Diana Enriquez & Janet Vertesi, Princeton University, The impact of automated management on workers - virtual

Summer Sullivan, University of California, Santa Cruz, Beyond (In)visibility: The materiality of ghost work within digital agriculture - virtual

3:30 - 4:00 pm | Coffee break (coffee, tea, & light vegetarian snacks), Foyer X & Y

4:00 - 4:45 pm | Group exploration and ideation for exploring ghost workers’ role

4:45 - 5:15 pm | Mapping activity

5:15 - 5:30 pm | Wrap-up & next steps

 
 

WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS

Yana Boeva (main contact), University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

Arne Berger, Hochschule Anhalt, Koethen, Germany

Andreas Bischof, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany

Olivia Doggett, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

Hendrik Heuer, University of Bremen, Germany

Juliane Jarke, University of Graz, Austria

Pat Treusch, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

Roger A. Søraa, NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

Jasmina Tacheva, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA

Maja-Lee Voigt, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Lüneburg, Germany