Waiting for Robots - by Antonio A Casilli (Paperback)

About the Book

"Artificial Intelligence fuels both panic and enthusiasm. Technologists are inclined to give their creations leeway, pretend they're animated beings, and consider them efficient. Users complain when these technologies don't obey; we worry about their influence on our choices and our livelihoods; and we yearn for their convenience. We see ourselves reflected in them, and we treat them as something entirely new. However unwillingly, when we overestimate the performance of these tools, we fail to recognize how our fellow humans contribute to their efficiency. In this bracing and powerful book, sociologist and award-winning author Antonio Casilli uses up-to-the-minute research to show how AI continues to exploit human labor, including yours. He connects the diverse activities of today's tech laborers: platform laborers, like Uber drivers and Airbnb hosts; remote workers, performing atomized tasks like data entry on Amazon Mechanical Turk; and you, as you evaluate text or images to show you're not a robot, react to Facebook posts, or approve ChatGPT output. Using diverse examples, Casilli reveals that most "automation" still requires human labor, showing both tomorrow's threats and today's consequences for failing to recognize and compensate human workers."--

Book Synopsis

An essential investigation that pulls back the curtain on automation, like AI, to show human workers' hidden labor.

Artificial Intelligence fuels both enthusiasm and panic. Technologists are inclined to give their creations leeway, pretend they're animated beings, and consider them efficient. As users, we may complain when these technologies don't obey, or worry about their influence on our choices and our livelihoods. And yet, we also yearn for their convenience, see ourselves reflected in them, and treat them as something entirely new. But when we overestimate the automation of these tools, award-winning author Antonio A. Casilli argues, we fail to recognize how our fellow humans are essential to their efficiency. The danger is not that robots will take our jobs, but that humans will have to do theirs.

In this bracing and powerful book, Casilli uses up-to-the-minute research to show how today's technologies, including AI, continue to exploit human labor--even ours. He connects the diverse activities of today's tech laborers: platform workers, like Uber drivers and Airbnb hosts; "micro workers," including those performing atomized tasks like data entry on Amazon Mechanical Turk; and the rest of us, as we evaluate text or images to show we're not robots, react to Facebook posts, or approve or improve the output of generative AI. As Casilli shows us, algorithms, search engines, and voice assistants wouldn't function without unpaid or underpaid human contributions. Further, he warns that if we fail to recognize this human work, we risk a dark future for all human labor.

Waiting for Robots urges us to move beyond the simplistic notion that machines are intelligent and autonomous. As the proverbial Godot, robots are the bearers of a messianic promise that is always postponed. Instead of bringing prosperity for all, they discipline the workforce, so we don't dream of a world without drudgery and exploitation. Casilli's eye-opening book makes clear that most "automation" requires human labor--and likely always will--shedding new light on today's consequences and tomorrow's threats of failing to recognize and compensate the "click workers" of today.

Review Quotes

"Casilli's Waiting for Robots exposes the 'ghost work' behind artificial intelligence, the millions of click workers in the Global South who tag images and moderate content for cents per task, invisible humans training the machines that are supposed to replace them. . . . From Beijing to Leipzig to Bengaluru, the pattern is the same. The platform extracts value from labor while refusing to acknowledge the laborer."

-- "The Hindu, "The Frontline Weekly" newsletter"

"We hear daily that machines are learning, adapting, and replacing human intervention across the supply chain--from predictive maintenance to intelligent inspection and beyond. But Waiting for Robots (a title that knowingly echoes Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot) by Casilli offers a critical counterpoint that deserves attention from anyone working in automation or industrial systems. Like Beckett's elusive Godot, the fully autonomous future we're promised never quite arrives--and meanwhile, humans keep doing the work. . . . Casilli's analysis hits close to home for industries embracing digital transformation. . . . This is a provocative, well-researched, and timely read for engineers, executives, and system designers. In the age of smart machines, the most powerful force in automation may still be human labor--only now it's harder to see. And just like Godot, the robots we're waiting for might never come--at least not without us working quietly behind the curtain, keeping the show running."-- "Power Transmission Engineering"

"Casilli is a prominent sociologist and social/digital ethnographer known for his work on digital labor, social media, and the impact of digital innovation (and artificial intelligence) on society. . . . In Waiting for Robots, Casilli focuses on increasing innovation in digital labor and automation operating within various economic structures, including popular digital social media, search, commercial, and 'gig economy' platforms. Casilli addresses exploitation of digital labor through restructuring relationships between employers and employees in the digital economy, leading to increasing exploitation margins over time. Casilli recognizes current struggles to improve working conditions of digital labor and political pushbacks against such struggles. The text concludes with a discussion of potential policy decisions that could restore the original promise of digitization to foster open-source (social property rights), reduce exploitation (if not eliminate it), and reduce inequality. Recommended."-- "Choice"

"One of the sharpest critics of AI is sociologist Casilli. . . . Casilli argues that we should focus on digital labor, specifically the work that goes into AI training and data labeling, which illustrates that human workers are actually being replaced by other humans."-- "Jacobin"

"Casilli argues that despite claims to the contrary, human input remains a crucial component of all modern automation and artificial-intelligence tools, regardless of their sophistication. The difference is that instead of this role being obvious . . . it's now hidden, and usually on purpose. . . . Casilli gives readers plenty of examples of how human labor (much of it coming from Asian, Latin American, and African countries) props up--or, in some cases, pretends to actually be--intelligent systems and products. . . . Robots, automation, and various intelligent systems have been just on the verge of taking over all aspects of our work lives and cultural output for decades now. In the end, artificial intelligence is a technological process that isn't actually artificial, he says. Peer behind the curtains of smooth and seamless efficiency, and it's humans all the way down."--Bryan Gardiner "MIT Technology Review"

"Casilli debunks the AI myth and points to the data factories in Africa, Latin America and China. It's the human robots that produce intelligence, he argues. Not just algorithms."--Matthaios Tsimitakis "Creatives Unite"

"US founding father Thomas Jefferson used dumbwaiters--small lifts that carry meals--during his extravagant dinners. There seemed to be no human intervention, but the lifts were operated by enslaved basement staff. As sociologist Casilli acutely observes, today too, artificial-intelligence systems are made to seem automated, often by overlooked and underpaid workers. His thought-provoking survey of robots highlights 'the presence of inconspicuous labour in AI solutions, ' hence its blunt subtitle, the Hired Hands of Automation."--Andrew Robinson "Nature"

"The powerful point [Waiting for Robots] makes is the complete dependence of AI and digital technologies generally on ongoing human input. . . . The book makes a compelling case that robots and humans are interdependent and will remain so. Generative AI will continue to need human-produced material ('data') and intervention to avert model collapse. Humans are also going to have to pay for digital services so will need to have money to pay with. Focusing on the economic dynamics involved is crucial, as it is clear that the market/platform/ecosystem structures are currently tilted towards the (owners of) robots and away from humans. . . . There is a lot of food for thought in Waiting for Robots."--Diane Coyle "The Enlightened Economist"

"Casilli's incisive analysis of the hidden human costs of AI, combined with his clear and engaging prose, establishes the book as essential reading for those seeking to understand the ethical and social dimensions of technology. By dismantling the conventional wisdom surrounding AI and exposing the labor that underpins it, Casilli offers a compelling framework for envisioning a more equitable and inclusive digital future."--Dov Greenbaum and Mark Gerstein "Science"

"Rather than replacing jobs, new technologies are changing them in fundamental ways. Secure, long-term, financially rewarding, and often meaningful work is being replaced by work that is precarious, short-term, underpaid or unpaid, and 'taskified' into small segments whose end purpose the worker may not even know. . . . Waiting for Robots was first published in France in 2019. . . . The updating is quite thorough. The impact of tools like ChatGPT--which didn't exist when the French edition was published--is addressed throughout, and there's an abundance of post-2019 sources in the footnotes for further study. The translation by Brown preserves the force of Casilli's polemical style."--Joseph Cothrel "Newcity"

"Hidden labour and exploitation of human workers involved in the production and facilitation of automation."-- "The Bookseller"

"This recommended philosophical exploration of the current human labor cost of AI deepens the conversation around the promise and future of this type of technology."-- "Library Journal"

"Disturbing. . . . Artificial intelligence, according to its advocates, holds out the promise of an end to mind-numbing, exploitative work. Casilli . . . vehemently disagrees. He argues that it has merely changed the type of labor and the structure of the exploitation, and he has a mountain of research to support his case. . . . Casilli has identified a host of problems in the brave new world of AI, and perhaps this book can be a good place to start thinking about solutions. Revealing the dirty secrets of the AI revolution--and offering ideas for a path forward."-- "Kirkus Reviews"

"In this feisty manifesto, Casilli accuses the tech industry of using automation to exploit a growing digital workforce. . . . Casilli's sobering perspective makes clear that the dangers posed by AI are more mundane, if no less insidious, than commonly imagined, and the recommendation to implement a 'universal digital income'--in which profits reaped by tech companies from monetizing user data are taxed and redistributed to the public--is bold and original. A troubling snapshot of the future of work, this unnerves."-- "Publishers Weekly"

"Waiting for Robots, sweeping in its scope but exacting in its analysis, addresses the myriad, often hidden and unexpected ways AI is reconfiguring the nature of work, jobs, and labor worldwide. Written with verve and grace, Casilli's account stands out as one of the most perceptive and critical accounts of AI that has come out in recent times."--Gabriella Coleman, Harvard University, author of "Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous"

"This book arrives just in time: in a moment in which the collective has focused its greatest dreams, or deepest anxieties, depending on where you sit, on the imminent reordering of society under the regime of large language model-fueled natural language processing tools such as ChatGPT and other AI-based automation of all sorts. . . . As Casilli reminds us, the 'digit' of 'digital labor' refers to numbers, yes, but it also refers to the digits of the hand, leaving their fingerprints wherever they touch these technologies, as long as we know where, and how, to look."--Sarah T. Roberts, University of California, Los Angeles, author of "Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media," from the foreword

"Casilli's pioneering book, now updated and available for the first time in English, completely upends the celebratory myths about AI. Through a quite remarkable range of international fieldwork, Casilli shows how exploited human workers, usually in the Global South, not only train AI, but often literally do the exhausting work branded as 'artificial' intelligence. A devastating portrait of the realities of the capitalist platform economy."--Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science, coauthor of "Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back"

"In Waiting for Robots, Casilli offers a sweeping exploration of digital labor, analogous to Melville's meticulous chronicles of the whaling industry. Casilli takes readers on a provocative journey where human work is not disappearing but evolving in unexpected ways. With a blend of analysis and a subtly wry sense of humor, he debunks the myth of AI-driven job replacement, exposing how human labor is reconfigured and concealed within digital platforms. Bridging history, media, philosophy, and business, this page-turning work redefines our understanding of digital labor and underscores the enduring significance of human work. An indispensable guide for scholars and general readers alike."--R. Trebor Scholz, New School, author of "Own This!: How Platform Cooperatives Help Workers Build a Democratic Internet"

"In this brilliant, important book, Casilli upends the standard Promethean narrative that AI is here to liberate humankind from dull, dirty, and dangerous work. He explores, instead, the opposite tendency: tech advances dependent on exploited and precarious labor. Grounded in the stories of delivery drivers, taskers, and microworkers condemned to piecework, and leavened by a sophisticated understanding of the political economy of automation, Waiting for Robots offers a compelling vision for a truly inclusive tech economy."--Frank Pasquale, professor of law, Cornell University, author of "New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI"

About the Author

Antonio A. Casilli is professor of sociology at the Institut Polytechnique de Paris and a member of the Interdisciplinary Institute on Innovation of the French National Center for Scientific Research. In addition to co-leading the research team DiPLab (Digital Platform Labor), he is the co-founder of the INDL (International Network on Digital Labor). Saskia Brown has translated many books from French.