[Databite No. 158] Adaptation | Generative AI's Labor Impacts

Predominant narratives that cast workers as replaceable hide the ways in which workers are actively responding to generative AI. Many build new skills and tools to their advantage while others sabotage, counteract and otherwise circumvent these systems. The relationship workers have with technology is much more dynamic, contested and layered. Narratives that cast workers as replaceable, for example, obscure the active and complex ways that workers are responding to generative AI. While many build new skills and use these tools and systems to their advantage, others sabotage, counteract, and otherwise circumvent them. In this conversation, Livia Garofalo, Jeff Freitas, Quinten Steenhuis and Data & Society host Aiha Nguyen explored the ways that workers reshape their relationship with generative AI tools – and as a result, with work itself.