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Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass
by
In the spirit of Nickel and Dimed, a necessary and revelatory expose of the invisible human workforce that powers the web—and that foreshadows the true future of work.
Hidden beneath the surface of the web, lost in our wrong-headed debates about AI, a new menace is looming. Anthropologist Mary L. Gray and computer scientist Siddharth Suri team up to unveil how services delive ...more
Hidden beneath the surface of the web, lost in our wrong-headed debates about AI, a new menace is looming. Anthropologist Mary L. Gray and computer scientist Siddharth Suri team up to unveil how services delive ...more
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Kindle Edition, 288 pages
Published
May 7th 2019
by Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri addresses a new kind of worker: one who bridges the gap between what AI can and can not do. As Gray and Suri note, “the great paradox of automation is that the desire to eliminate human labor always generates new tasks for humans.” This book is about the gray area between the robots taking over and humans.
These workers are the ones that decide if a picture that was flagged is obscene ...more
These workers are the ones that decide if a picture that was flagged is obscene ...more
Ghost workers are on-demand, disposable people who work behind the curtain to ensure the internet lives up to its promise. In Ghost Work, Mary Gray and Siddharth Suri have gone behind the curtain themselves, gathering data and interviewing the people who do the work. It is the first to penetrate this domain, which clearly needs more such efforts.
In the world of ghost work, jobs last for seconds, not years. Workers must spend far more hours searching for quick gigs than actually performing them. ...more
In the world of ghost work, jobs last for seconds, not years. Workers must spend far more hours searching for quick gigs than actually performing them. ...more
A well-researched analysis of people doing ghost work for big tech companies. As consumers (or even developers), we are often unaware or underappreciate the ghost work that powers our apps. Ghost work ranges from the human labor that goes into labeling training data for AI models, social media content moderation, search engine evaluation, identity verification, software testing, and countless other micro and macro tasks that are invisibly outsourced by today's fast-moving businesses. The book of
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Jul 22, 2019
Wendy Liu
rated it
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review of another edition
Shelves:
silicon-valley-etc,
capitalism-etc
It's decent as a survey of ghost work, featuring stories from workers around the world.
As a critique of labour practices in Silicon Valley, it's a little disappointing - more like a business book than the "startling exposé" it's claimed to be (Tim O'Reilly and Martin Ford are listed among the blurbs on the back). Accordingly, the proposed solutions (like universal healthcare, or a different employment model) are all framed in pro-business terms, rather than in terms of workers' needs ...more
As a critique of labour practices in Silicon Valley, it's a little disappointing - more like a business book than the "startling exposé" it's claimed to be (Tim O'Reilly and Martin Ford are listed among the blurbs on the back). Accordingly, the proposed solutions (like universal healthcare, or a different employment model) are all framed in pro-business terms, rather than in terms of workers' needs ...more
If you are expecting a deep economical and political analysis of the gig economy or "ghost work", you will be disappointed.
The book does provides an interesting field research focusing on workers on platforms that focus on piece work requested through APIs, like Amazon's Mechanical Turk, which is a less visible workforce than Uber drivers, and that alone is the value of the book, but that's kind of it.
There is no in depth economical analysis, no political considerations b ...more
The book does provides an interesting field research focusing on workers on platforms that focus on piece work requested through APIs, like Amazon's Mechanical Turk, which is a less visible workforce than Uber drivers, and that alone is the value of the book, but that's kind of it.
There is no in depth economical analysis, no political considerations b ...more
This was a very interesting look into the use of platforms that distribute work into micro and macrotasks which can be completed by individual contractors instead of having full-time employees. The authors worked hard to avoid taking any particular sides on the existence of this new work type, providing benefits and issues. While these platforms have opened up opportunities for those who may need to work from home or are in developing nations, they don't offer the same types employment benefits
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This is a book about the piece rate workers who interact and support many of the internet sites that most of us see as completely automated rather than the product of human labor. Indeed, one of the more interesting perspectives of this book is that the conceptual split between human labor and automation is often a faulty one. As AI based and other automated systems progress, there will always be a “last mile” to traverse during which the human-machine interaction will not just persist but will
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I don't follow Silicon Valley much, so this book offers a very clear picture from one angle: ghost workers; I also learned the role labor laws played, especially by Taft-Hartley.
However, the book doesn't quite fit the subtitle "how to stop Silicon Valley from building a new global underclass." I have the feeling that the authors mostly talked from a technical bubble (I guess that's their expertise), and a lot of the answers are quite shallow. Only in the last few page, the book covers universal ...more
However, the book doesn't quite fit the subtitle "how to stop Silicon Valley from building a new global underclass." I have the feeling that the authors mostly talked from a technical bubble (I guess that's their expertise), and a lot of the answers are quite shallow. Only in the last few page, the book covers universal ...more
Books critically evaluating Silicon Valley are becoming a grim and established subgenre, one I'm becoming well-acquainted with at this point. There's something about the dual nature of the tech sector, promising a glittering future for all humankind while producing uncountable inequities around the world, that cries out for my attention. As a disabled person who benefits enormously from accessible technology and virtual social spaces, I feel beholden to fully understand the tools I use each day
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This is a well-researched and interesting read, and a welcome reality check on the spin of AI in the public sphere. The authors look behind the screen and into the lives of workers on MTurk, Microsoft's Universal Human Relevance System, LeadGenius, and Amara.org. They give voice to the obscured human labor that powers digital tools we use.
It's hard to see the labor until it's been documented, empowered. Imagine an industrial system coming of age in the 19th century and not seeing a factory run, ...more
It's hard to see the labor until it's been documented, empowered. Imagine an industrial system coming of age in the 19th century and not seeing a factory run, ...more
A mediocre and unoriginal work about the the old "Me - Tarzan; you - Jane" put into a Marxist key: "Rich - evil; poor - victim". Nothing special. But I had to give it a second star for the beautiful irony: Gray is the only one benefiting from the work of the employers and employees alike, by living a comfy life on grants and wages paid by taxes collected from the ones that do produce something for the society. And Gray is sure to also have a comfy pension plan when the same employers and employe
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This does a good job of describing the ghost work economy--the millions (and counting) low-paying, underappreciated short-term gigs completed by a freelance workers from home. These are tasks like verifying ID for AirBnb et al., identifying images for search engines (and to train future AI), etc.
My only real complaint is how dismissive Gray is of worker efforts to unionize and demand better wages and working conditions. She instead focuses on consumer demands for fairer treatment of ...more
My only real complaint is how dismissive Gray is of worker efforts to unionize and demand better wages and working conditions. She instead focuses on consumer demands for fairer treatment of ...more
The bad: although it presents some good points, the book feels somewhat lacking. Would love to have some external views, the thoughts of some experts, and of complementing views. Although the content is good, the book feels like a long article versus a full book. The core ideas and train of thought are there, but it feels like it could have used being a bit more flashed out.
The good: some very good points on worker rights, the risks of automation and others. It's a very interesting b ...more
The good: some very good points on worker rights, the risks of automation and others. It's a very interesting b ...more
Although a crucial exploration of a) human effort behind the lie of "automation", and b) special, alienating conditions of that work, the authors optimistically falls short of condemning the economic forces which continuously arrive at these conditions, and too often praises inadequate perks, such as "flexibility" which, while vital to some, hardly compensate for the generally explorative nature of ghost work.
Still, their coining of this term is invaluable. Amusingly, they use "ghost ...more
Still, their coining of this term is invaluable. Amusingly, they use "ghost ...more
The hidden labour market that underpins many of our technologies remains chronically under-analysed, and a huge credit to Mary Gray and Siddharth Suri for providing such a comprehensive overview of the topic. Ghost Work was clearly well researched, and provides both the insight and research needed to grasp an issue of growing societal importance.
Very interesting look into the humanity of AI and online tools. The structure of the book could have helped us better understand the characters behind the on demand work.
A balanced and insightful look at the people behind the screen and participating in the on-demand gig economy.
This was enlightening read. I’m guessing everyone, especially in the IT field, will love the perspective and details provided.
A lot of research.
Very little analysis.
Very little analysis.
Interesting topic- writing was a bit repetitive
Works as a 5 minute short article in the new yorker or something, but expanding it out into a full book didn't add much (beyond a bunch of words.) Never really got into the how to promised in the subtitle.
While much attention is given to the rise of AI and how that impacts our lives, this is the first in-depth look at a significant, and very human subtopic: ghost work. Otherwise categorized as freelancing, part of the gig economy, or on-demand labor, ghost work is the tasks that an invisible labor force completes to make the algorithms that power our technological world run smoothly and accurately, tasks like tagging images and transcribing videos. Workers hope to control their work and lives, a
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“It took organized labor and the collective action of workers to make full-time employment in the semi-automated world of industrial manufacturing inhabitable. Unfortunately, the valorization and validation of full-time employment also made it easier for corporate interests to position piecework and, later, other forms of temporary or contract labor as expendable, that is, work that did not warrant protections.”
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“When industries fixate on automating jobs away, they paradoxically spoke demand for ghost work, shredding the social contract between employer and worker in their wake.”
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