Podcast appearances and mentions of Mary L Gray

Everything is not what it seems. We can easily disguise ourselves in both the digital and physical world. This hour, TED speakers explore the ways we go incognito... from espionage to virtual reality. Guests include former CIA Chief of Disguise Jonna Mendez, artist Holly Herndon, anthropologist Mary L. Gray and digital fashion designer Gala Marija Vrbanic. Original broadcast date: August 26, 2022. TED Radio Hour+ subscribers now get access to bonus episodes, with more ideas from TED speakers and a behind the scenes look with our producers. A Plus subscription also lets you listen to regular episodes (like this one!) without sponsors. Sign-up at: plus.npr.org/tedLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

In this episode of PRIM&R's podcast, “Research Ethics Reimagined,” we explore the intersection of artificial intelligence, ethics, and studying human behavior in the digital age. Our guest is Mary L. Gray, Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and Faculty Associate at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.

Original broadcast date: August 26, 2022. Everything is not what it seems. We can easily disguise ourselves in both the digital and physical world. This hour, TED speakers explore the ways we go incognito... from espionage to virtual reality. Guests include former CIA Chief of Disguise Jonna Mendez, artist Holly Herndon, anthropologist Mary L. Gray and digital fashion designer Gala Marija Vrbanic. TED Radio Hour+ subscribers now get access to bonus episodes, with more ideas from TED speakers and a behind the scenes look with our producers. A Plus subscription also lets you listen to regular episodes (like this one!) without sponsors. Sign-up at: plus.npr.org/ted

Paris Marx is joined by Emily M. Bender to discuss what it means to say that ChatGPT is a “stochastic parrot,” why Elon Musk is calling to pause AI development, and how the tech industry uses language to trick us into buying its narratives about technology. Emily M. Bender is a professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Washington and the Faculty Director of the Computational Linguistics Master's Program. She's also the director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory. Follow Emily on Twitter at @emilymbender or on Mastodon at @emilymbender@dair-community.social. Tech Won't Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon. The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.  Also mentioned in this episode:Emily was one of the co-authors on the “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots” paper and co-wrote the “Octopus Paper” with Alexander Koller. She was also recently profiled in New York Magazine and has written about why policymakers shouldn't fall for the AI hype.The Future of Life Institute put out the “Pause Giant AI Experiments” letter and the authors of the “Stochastic Parrots” paper responded through DAIR Institute.Zachary Loeb has written about Joseph Weizenbaum and the ELIZA chatbot.Leslie Kay Jones has researched how Black women use and experience social media.As generative AI is rolled out, many tech companies are firing their AI ethics teams.Emily points to Algorithmic Justice League and AI Incident Database.Deborah Raji wrote about data and systemic racism for MIT Tech Review.Books mentioned: Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil, Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Noble, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin, Ghost Work by Mary L Gray & Siddharth Suri, Artificial Unintelligence by Meredith Broussard, Design Justice by Sasha Costanza-Chock, Data Conscience: Algorithmic S1ege on our Hum4n1ty by Brandeis Marshall.Support the show

It's a new season of The Received Wisdom!! After their partial summer hiatus, Shobita and Jack discuss the fraud allegations that are rocking the foundations of what we know about Alzheimer's Disease, and the Biden Administration's directive to make freely available all publications based on federally funded research. And, they chat with Macarthur Fellow Mary Gray about the "ghost workers" behind digital technologies and supposedly artificial intelligence. Gray is Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, Faculty Associate at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, and faculty in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering with affiliations in Anthropology and Gender Studies at Indiana University.Relevant Links- Charles Piller (2022). "Blots on a Field?" Science. July 21.- The White House (2022). "Breakthroughs for All: Delivering Equitable Access to America's Research." OSTP Blog. August 25.- Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri (2019). Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a Global Underclass. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.- National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (2022). Fostering Responsible Computing Research: Foundations and Practices. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.- Mary L. Gray with Catherine Powell (2021). "The Emerging Technology Underclass." Council on Foreign Relations' Women and Foreign Policy Roundtable Series and Roundtable Series on Cybersecurity and Cyberconflict.- Margaret Bourdeaux, Mary L. Gray, and Barbara Grosz (2020). "How human-centered tech can beat COVID-19 through contact tracing." The Hill. April 20.Study questions and full transcript available at thereceivedwisdom.org

Everything is not what it seems. We can easily disguise ourselves in both the digital and physical world. This hour, TED speakers explore the ways we go incognito... from espionage to virtual reality. Guests include former CIA Chief of Disguise Jonna Mendez, artist Holly Herndon, anthropologist Mary L. Gray and digital fashion designer Gala Marija Vrbanic.

This week, we look at a few of the macro trends shaping both the labor market today and the future of work — such as the Great Resignation and collective bargaining — and examine how tech-driven business has both brought them about and potentially given workers more freedom and leverage. We also consider what all of that means for you if you're the one tasked with managing workers or leading a workplace forward, as well as what these trends might mean overall for humanity. Guests this week include Giselle Mota, Christopher Mims, Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, Dorothea Baur, John C. Havens, and Vanessa Mason. The Tech Humanist Show is a multi-media-format program exploring how data and technology shape the human experience. Hosted by Kate O'Neill. To watch full interviews with past and future guests, or for updates on what Kate O'Neill is doing next, subscribe to The Tech Humanist Show hosted by Kate O'Neill channel on YouTube. Full Transcript: Kate: The global workforce is experiencing an unprecedented level of change. The Great Resignation may look like a direct result of the COVID Pandemic, but the drivers behind this large-scale trend come from deep-rooted and centuries-old issues in employer-employee dynamics that have been amplified by evolving technology. So in this episode, we're exploring the lessons we've learned from the technologization — the impact of technology on work, as well as how the changing work landscape is pushing people to crave and demand more agency over our work and our lives. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Giselle Mota, Principal Consultant on the Future of Work at ADP, who offered some insight into the emotional human factor behind these changes. Giselle: “I think it's more about us realizing that work is not all that we are. Some people have left their very high-paying roles because they had stress about it, or because they need to be at home caregiving, or now they have issues with their own healthcare or mental health that came up, and they're prioritizing self over this idea of ‘I live to work I live to work I live to work,' right? The value system of humanity globally has shifted a lot, and people have been reassessing, ‘how do I want to spend my time?' ‘How do I want to live my life?' Work should not be driving all of that, our lives should be driving work experience. The ability to think about choosing when you're gonna work, ability to work from different places, how long is my work week, can I come in and out of my shifts throughout the day, can I work on projects, can I destructure and break down what work is and work at it my way? I think that's what we've been seeing.” Kate: Before we can fully understand why this is happening, we have to look at where we are and how we got here. Trends like the Great Resignation follow many years of jobs being automated or shipped overseas. Fewer people are needed to fill the remaining roles, so demand for workers in certain markets is disappearing, while in other markets, the supply of workers for a given job is so high that people aren't paid a living wage. With the rise of the ‘gig economy,' it's becoming less clear what level of education is needed to attain a well-paying job that will still be around in 5 years. Not that this is an entirely new phenomenon. Since at least the dawn of the industrial era, automation caused certain jobs to go out of favor while other jobs sprang up to fill the void. In the 21st century, with the advent of the Internet, algorithms, and ‘big data,' this cycle has been significantly accelerated. More jobs have been “optimized” by technology to prioritize maximum efficiency over human well-being, which is part of what's causing—as I talked about in our last episode—a global mental health crisis. And while the overview sounds bad, there is good news. As long as we can stay open-minded to change, we can work together to design solutions that work for everyone. And if we can do that, the future of work has the potential to be much brighter than the realities of today. To get there, we have to ask ourselves, what assumptions were made in the past to create the modern work environment, and which of those no longer serve us? Rahaf: “If we're gonna move to a more humane productivity mindset, we have to have some uncomfortable conversations about the role of work in our lives, the link between our identity and our jobs and our self-worth, our need for validation with social media and professional recognition, our egos…” Kate: That's Rahaf Harfoush, a Strategist, Digital Anthropologist, and Best-Selling Author who focuses on the intersections between emerging technology, innovation, and digital culture. You may have heard the extended version of this quote in our last episode, but her insight into how questioning our assumptions about work is playing into the changing work landscape felt equally relevant here. Rahaf: “We really have to talk about, ‘growing up, what did your parents teach you about work ethic?' how is that related to how you see yourself? Who are the people that you admire? You can start testing your relationship with work, and you start to see that we have built a relationship with work psychologically where we feel like if we don't work hard enough, we're not deserving. We don't ever stop and say, ‘does this belief actually allow me to produce my best possible work, or is it just pushing me to a point where I'm exhausted and burnt out?” Kate: Outside of our own personal assumptions about our relationship with work, there's also the relationship businesses and technology have with us as consumers, and how their assumptions about what we want are equally problematic. John: “I've read a lot of media, where there's a lot of assumptions that I would call, if not arrogant, certainly dismissive, if not wildly rude… You'll read an article that's like, ‘This machine does X, it shovels! Because no one wants to shovel for a living'!” Kate: That's John C. Havens, Executive Director of the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems. Here he's talking about the current belief held by a lot of the people creating modern technologies that everything can be automated, no matter the cost. John: “We've all done jobs that, elements of it you really don't like and wish could be automated, but usually that's because you do the job long enough to realize, this part of my job I wish could be automated. I've done a lot of, y'know, camp counseling jobs for the summer where I was outside, y'know I was doing physical labor… it was awesome! That said, you know, I was like, ‘this is great for what it was, I kind of don't want to do this for my whole life.' Yeah, a lot of people would not be like, ‘give me 40 years of shoveling!' But the other thing there that I really get upset about when I read some of those articles is what if, whatever the job is, insert job X, is how someone makes their living? Then it's not just a value judgment of the nature of the labor itself, but is saying, from the economic side of it, it's justified to automate anything that can be automated, because someone can make money from it outside of what that person does to make money for them and their family. We have to have a discussion about, y'know, which jobs might go away. Why is that not brought up? It's because there's the assumption, at all times, that the main indicator of success is exponential growth. And a lot of my work is to say, I don't think that's true.” In many ways, our society has failed to question the assumption ‘if something can be automated, automate it.' But as the great Ian Malcolm said in Jurassic Park, “your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.” While automation of jobs is frequently thought of in a manufacturing context, more and more we're seeing automating creep into other areas as well, like decision-making and workplace management. The same factories where machines are replacing physical human labor have now been optimized to replace human thought labor and managers as well. Christopher Mims, tech columnist at the Wall Street Journal and author of Arriving Today, on how everything gets from the factory to our front door, calls this phenomenon “Bezosism.” Christopher: “Bezosism, it's like the modern-day version of Taylorism or Fordism… the bottom line is, this is how you optimize the repetitive work that people do. This isn't just Amazon, Amazon is just the tip of the sphere. Amazon is the best at doing this, but every other company that can is trying to do the same thing: make workers more productive by managing them with software and algorithms, kind of whatever the consequence is. Emily Gindelsberger talks about how, whether it's an Amazon warehouse, or any fast-food restaurant you can name, or a call center… all of these places are now managed by algorithm, and the workers are monitored by software. Instead of a boss telling them to work faster, it's the software cracking the whip and being like, ‘you're not working fast enough, you need to pick packages faster' in this Amazon warehouse, or ‘you need to flip burgers faster' if you work at a McDonald's. But this is becoming the dominant way that work is organized if you don't have a college degree, if you're an hourly worker. You know, the whole phenomenon of the gig economy, the rise of part-time work, subcontracting, the so-called ‘fissured workplace'—all of that is, as one person put it, do you work above the API, like, are you a knowledge worker who's creating these systems? Or do you work below the API, where, what's organizing your work and your life—it's a piece of software! I mean, it's designed by humans, but your boss is an algorithm. And that is becoming, other than wealth and income inequality, one of the defining characteristics of, almost a neo-feudalism, ‘cause it's like, ‘hey! we've figured out how to organize labor at scale, and extract the most from people and make them work as efficiently as possible… we'll just let the software do it!'” Kate: The acceleration of this style of management is a big part of the driver pushing people to question our assumptions about work and begin to demand more agency. If you've been following my work for a while, you've heard me say, “the economy is people”, and that means we can't talk about the future of work without talking about the future of the worker. The idea that people, especially those doing what is considered ‘unskilled' labor, have little agency over how they work isn't new. AI may have exacerbated the issue, but the problem goes back as far as labor itself. Labor unions arose in the early 19th century in an attempt to level the playing field and allow workers to express their needs and concerns, but as we've seen with the recent Starbucks and Amazon unionization stories, the battle for human rights and agency in the workplace is far from decided. And it isn't just factories and assembly lines—it's happening in every industry. In the tech industry, there's a subset of people known as “Ghost Workers,” a term created by anthropologist Mary L. Gray and computer scientist Siddharth Suri to describe the usually underpaid and unseen workers doing contract work or content moderation. They frequently work alone, don't interact with one another, and often aren't even aware who they're working for, so the idea of collective bargaining feels farther out of reach. Dorothea Baur, a leading expert & advisor in Europe on ethics, responsibility, and sustainability across industries such as finance, technology, and beyond, explains some of the human rights issues at play in this phenomenon. Dorothea: “If you look at heavily industrialized contexts or like, heavy manufacturing, or like, textile industry, the rights we talk about first are like the human rights of labor, health and safety, etc. But I mean, trade unions have come out of fashion awhile ago, a lot of companies don't really like to talk about trade unions anymore. So when we switch to AI you think, ‘oh, we're in the service industry, it's not labor intensive,' but the human factor is still there. Certainly not blue collar employees, at least not within the own operations of tech companies, and also maybe not as many white collar employees, in relation to their turnover as in other contexts, but there's a lot of people linked to tech companies or to AI, often invisible. We have those Ghost Workers, gig economy, or people doing low-payed work of tagging pictures to train algo—uh, data sets, etc., so there is a labor issue, a classical one, that's really a straightforward human rights case there.” Kate: Algorithms have worked their way into the systems that manage most of our industries, from factory workers to police to judges. It's more than just “work faster,” too. These algorithms are making decisions as important as where and how many police should be deployed, as well as whether bail should be set, and at what amount. The logical (but not necessarily inevitable) extreme of this way of thinking is that all decisions will be relegated to algorithms and machines. But if people with the ability to make decisions continue to give these types of decisions to machines, we continue to lose sight of the human in the equation. What little decision making power the workers had before is being taken away and given to AI; little by little, human agency is being stripped away. The question then becomes, what if an algorithm tells a worker to do something they think is wrong? Will they have the freedom to question the algorithm, or is the output absolute? Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, Director of the Machine Learning Ethics, Transparency, and Accountability team at Twitter, elaborates. Rumman: “So if we're talking about, for example, a recommendation system to help judges decide if certain prisoners should get bail or not get bail, what's really interesting is not just how this affects the prisoner, but also the role of the judge in sort of the structure of the judicial system, and whether or not they feel the need to be subject to the output of this model, whether they have the agency to say, ‘I disagree with this.' A judge is a position of high social standing, they're considered to be highly educated… if there's an algorithm and it's telling them something that they think is wrong, they may be in a better position to say, ‘I disagree, I'm not going to do this,' versus somebody who is let's say an employee, like a warehouse employee, at Amazon, or somebody who works in retail at a store where your job is not necessarily considered to be high prestige, and you may feel like your job is replaceable, or worse, you may get in trouble if you're not agreeing with the output of this model. So, thinking about this system that surrounds these models that could actually be a sort of identically structured model, but because of the individual's place in society, they can or cannot take action on it.” Kate: The jury — if you'll pardon the expression — is still out on these questions, but we do know that in the past, worker agency was a key element in the success of our early systems. In fact, in the early days of creating the assembly line, human agency was fundamental to the success of those systems. Christopher Mims again. Christopher: “The Toyota production system was developed in a context of extreme worker agency, of complete loyalty between employer and employee, lifelong employment in Japan, and workers who had the ability to stop the assembly line the instant they noticed that something was not working, and were consulted on all changes to the way that they work. Honestly, most companies in the US cannot imagine functioning in this way, and they find it incredibly threatening to imagine their hourly workers operating this way, and that's why they all—even ‘employee-friendly' Starbucks—uses all these union busting measures, and Amazon loves them… because they just think, ‘oh, god, the worst thing in the world would be if our ‘lazy' employees have some say over how they work. It's nonsense, right? There's an entire continent called Europe where worker counsels dictate how innovations are incorporated. You know, that's how these things work in Germany, but we have just so destroyed the ability of workers to organize, to have any agency… Frankly, it is just disrespectful, it's this idea that all this labor is “unskilled,” that what you learn in this jobs has no real value… I think companies, they're just in this short term quarter-to-quarter mentality, and they're not thinking like, ‘how are we building a legacy? How do we retain employees, and how do we make productivity compatible with their thriving and happiness?' They all give lip service to this, but if you push as hard as Starbucks for instance against a labor union, honestly you're just lying.” Kate: Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Unions were an imperfect but necessary solution to ensuring workers had access to rights, freedoms, and safety in certain workplaces. According to a 2020 report from the Economic Policy Institute, Unionized workers earn on average 11.2% more in wages than nonunionized peers, and Black and Hispanic workers get an even larger boost from unionization. However, it looks like the changing nature of work is changing unionization as well. Unlike the Great Depression, which expanded the reach of labor unions, the Great Recession may have ushered in a period of de-unionization in the public sector. From the 1970s to today, the percentage of U.S. workers in a union has fallen from 25 to just 11.7 percent. In a piece of good news for Amazon employees in New York, they successfully voted for a union in their workplace on April 4th of this year, marking the first victory in a years-long battle for Amazon employee rights and agency. Looking forward, it's hard to say whether unions will be the best solution to worker woes. As more jobs become automated and fewer humans are needed in the workplace, there may be a time when there are only a few employees in a given department, which makes it harder to organize and empower collective bargaining. At the same time, being the only person working in your department may in fact give you more power to influence decisions in your workplace, as Christopher Mims explains. Christopher: “If you reduce the number of humans that work in a facility, it's like a tautology—the ones that remain are more important! Because in the old days, you could hire thousands of longshoreman to unload a ship, if one of them didn't show up, like, who cares? But if you're talking about a professional, today, longshoreman who's making in excess of 6 figures, has these incredibly specialized skills, knows how to operate a crane that can lift an 80,000 lb. shipping container off of a building-size ship, and safely put it on the back of a truck without killing anybody—that person doesn't show up to work, you just lost, y'know, a tenth of your productivity for that whole terminal that day. This is also an example of this tension between, like, it's great that these are good-paying blue-collar jobs, there aren't that many left in America, however, their negotiating power is also why the automation of ports has really been slowed. So that is a real genuine tension that has to be resolved.” Kate: So far in this episode, we've talked a lot about factory workers and the types of jobs that frequently unionize, but the future of work encompasses everyone on the work ladder. In the past, all of the problems regarding lack of worker agency has applied to ‘white collar' jobs as well. The modern office workplace evolved in tandem with factories, and the assumptions about how work should be organized are just as present there. Vanessa: “Our work environments, with who was involved with it and how they were constructed, is something that has been done over a long period of time. And the people who have been involved in that who are not White men, who are not sort of property owners, who are not otherwise wealthy, is a really short timeline.” Kate: That's Vanessa Mason, research director for the Institute for the Future's Vantage Partnership. Here she's explaining how workplace culture evolved from a factory mindset—and mostly by the mindset of a particular subgroup of people. Offices may feel like very different places from factories, but when you look at the big picture, the organizational structures are guided by many of the same ideas. Vanessa: “I think that a lot of organizations and offices are fundamentally sort of command and control, kind of top-down hierarchies, unfortunately. You know, the sort of, ‘the manager does this! Accountability only goes one direction! There's a low level of autonomy depending on what level you are in the chart!' All of those treat humans like widgets. I think that we have to keep in mind that history and that experience, like I still bring that experience into the workplace—basically, I'm in a workplace that was not designed for me, it's not meant for me to succeed, it's not meant for me to even feel as socially safe and as comfortable. There's a lot of research about psychological safety in teams. Like, our teams are not meant to be psychologically safe, they're set up to basically be office factories for us to sort of churn out whatever it is that we're doing in an increasingly efficient manner, productivity is off the charts, and then you receive a paycheck for said efforts. And it's only right now (especially in the pandemic) that people are sort of realizing that organizational culture 1) is created, and 2) that there's an organizational that people didn't realize that they were kind of unintentionally creating. And then 3) if you want your organizational culture to be something other than what it is, you need to collectively decide, and then implement that culture. All of those steps require a sort of precondition of vulnerability and curiosity which people are really frightened to do, and they're trying to escape the sort of harder longer work of negotiating for that to occur.” Kate: And that's what's needed from our managers and leaders as we navigate to a brighter future of work: vulnerability and curiosity. The vulnerability to admit that things could be better, and the curiosity to explore new ways of structuring work to allow more room for agency and decision-making to bring out the best in everyone. If the idea of a union sounds scary or expensive, perhaps there are other ways to allow employees the have more agency over how they work. A world in flux means there's still room to test new solutions. Lately, one of the changes business leaders have tried to make to their organizations is to bring in more diversity of workers. Women, people of color, neurodivergent minds, and people with disabilities have all been given more opportunities than they have in the past, but as Giselle Mota explains, just bringing those people into the workplace isn't enough. Giselle: “I read a study recently that was talking about, even though a lot of diverse people have been hired and promoted into leadership roles, they're leaving anyway. They don't stick around an organization. Why is that? Because no matter what the pay was, no matter what the opportunity was, some of them are realizing, this was maybe just an effort to check off a box, but the culture doesn't exist here where I truly belong, where I'm truly heard, where I want to bring something to the forefront and something's really being done about it. And again it has nothing to do with technology or innovation, we have to go back to very human, basic elements. Create that culture first, let people see that they have a voice, that what they say matters, it helps influence the direction of the company, and then from there you can do all these neat things.” Kate: If you're managing a workplace that has functioned one way for a long time, it may not be intuitive to change it to a model that is more worker agency-driven. How can you change something you may not even be aware exists? Vanessa Mason has a few tips for employers on what they can do to help bring about a new workplace culture. Vanessa: “And so what you can do, is really fundamentally listening! So, more spaces at all hands for employees to share what their experience has been, more experience to share what it is like to try to get to know co-workers. You know, anything that really just surfaces people's opinions and experiences and allows themselves to be heard—by everyone, I would say, also, too. Not just have one team do that and then the senior leadership just isn't involved in that at all. The second thing is to have some kind of spaces for shared imagination. Like all the sort of popular team retreats that are out there, but you certainly could do this asynchronously, at an event, as part of a celebration. Celebrating things like, y'know, someone has had a child, someone's gotten married, someone's bought a house—all of those things are sort of core to recognizing the pace and experience of being human in this world that aren't just about work and productivity. And then some way of communicating how you're going to act upon what you're hearing and what people are imagining, too. There's a bias towards inaction in most organizations, so that's something that certainly senior leadership should talk about: ‘How do we think about making changes, knowing that we're going to surface some changes from this process?' Being transparent, being accountable… all of those sort of pieces that go along with good change management.” Kate: A 2021 paper in the Journal of Management echoes these ideas, stating that communication between employers and their workers need to be authentic, ongoing, and two-directional, meaning that on top of listening to employee concerns, managers also needed to effectively communicate their understanding of those concerns as well as what they intended to do about them. A professional services firm analyzing a company's internal messaging metadata was able to predict highly successful managers by finding people who communicated often, responded quickly, and were action-oriented. Of course another thing many workplaces have been trying, especially in the wake of the COVID pandemic, is allowing employees to work remotely. Giselle Mota again. Giselle: “I think all we're seeing is we're just reimagining work, the worker, and workplace. Now that the pandemic happened, we learned from like Zoom, ‘wait a minute, I can actually work remotely, and still learn and produce and be productive, on a video!' But now, we can add layers of experience to it, and if you so choose to, you can now work in a virtual environment… people are flattening out the playing field. Companies that used to be die-hard ‘you have to work here in our office, you have to be here located right next door to our vicinity,' now they've opened it up and they're getting talent from across the pond, across the globe, from wherever! And it's creating new opportunities for people to get into new roles.” Kate: Although COVID and Zoom accelerated a lot of things, the idea of people working from home instead of the office isn't actually a new one. AT&T experimented with employees working from home back in 1994, exploring how far an organization could transform the workplace by moving the work to the worker instead of the other way around. Ultimately, they freed up around $550M in cash flow by eliminating no longer needed office space. AT&T also reported increases in worker productivity, ability to retain talent, and the ability to avoid sanctions like zoning rules while also meeting Clear Air Act requirements. As remote work on a massive scale is a relatively new phenomenon, the research is still ongoing as to how this will affect long-term work processes and human happiness. It is notable that working remotely is far less likely to be an option the farther you drop down the income ladder. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 9.2% of workers in the bottom quartile of wage-earners have the ability to work remotely. The availability also varies depending on the job you're doing, with education, healthcare, hospitality, agriculture, retail, and transportation among the least-able to work remotely, and finance and knowledge workers among the most-able. Because we aren't entirely sure whether remote work is the best long-term solution, it's worth looking at other ways to attract high-value workers—and keep them around. One idea? Invest in career planning. Technology is making it easier than ever for employers to work with their employees to plan for a future within the company. AI has made it possible to forecast roles that the company will need in the future, so rather than scramble to fill that role when the time comes, employers can work with a current or prospective employee to help prepare them for the job. In my conversation with Giselle Mota, she explored this idea further. Giselle: “A lot of companies are now able to start applying analytics and forecast and plan, ‘okay, if this is a role for the future, maybe it doesn't exist today, and maybe this person doesn't yet have all the qualifications for this other role. But, they expressed to us an interest in this area, they expressed certain qualifications that they do have today, and now AI can help, and data can help to match and help a human, you know, talent acquisition person, career developer, or manager, to help guide that user to say, ‘this is where you are today, this is where you want to be, so let's map out a career plan to help you get to where you should be'.” Kate: She went on to explain that employers don't need to think about jobs so rigidly, and rather than looking for one perfect person to fill a role, you can spread the tasks around to help prepare for the future. Giselle: “I was talking to someone the other day who was saying, ‘y'know, we have trouble finding diverse leadership within our organization and bringing them up,' and I was talking to them and saying, ‘break down a job! Let people be able to work on projects to be able to build up their skillset. Maybe they don't have what it takes today, fully, on paper to be what you might be looking for, but maybe you can give them exposure to that, and help them from the inside of your organization to take on those roles.” Kate: All of these changes to work and the workplace mean that a lot of office workers can demand more from their jobs. Rather than settle for something nearby with a rigid schedule, people can choose a job that fits their lifestyle. As more of these jobs are automated, we are hopefully heading for an age where people who were relegated to the so-called “unskilled” jobs will be able to find careers that work for them. Because it is more than the workplace that is changing, it's also the work itself. I asked Giselle what types of jobs we might see in the future, and she had this to say. Giselle: “As we continue to explore the workplace, the worker, and the work that's being done, as digital transformation keeps occurring, we keep forming new roles. But we also see a resurgence and reemergence of certain roles taking more importance than even before. For example, leadership development is on the rise more than ever. Why? Because if you look at the last few years and the way that people have been leaving their workplaces, and going to others and jumping ship, there's a need for leaders to lead well. Officers of diversity have been created in organizations that never had it before because the way the world was going, people had to start opening up roles like that when they didn't even have a department before. As we move into more virtual experiences, we need creators. We're seeing organizations, big technology organizations, people who enable virtual and video interactions are creating layers of experience that need those same designers and that same talent—gamers and all types of creators—to now come into their spaces to help them start shaping the future of what their next technology offerings are gonna look like. Before, if you used to be into photography or graphic design or gaming or whatever, now there's space for you in these organizations that probably specialize in human capital management, social management… To give you a quick example, Subway! Subway opened up a virtual space and they allowed an employee to man a virtual store, so you could go virtually, into a Subway, order a subway sandwich down the line like you're there in person, and there's someone that's actually manning that. That's a job. And apart from all of that side of the world, we need people to manage, we need legal counsel, we need people who work on AI and ethics and governance—data scientists on the rise, roles that are about data analytics… When Postmates came out and they were delivering to people's homes or wherever it was, college campuses, etc., with a robot, the person who was making sure that robot didn't get hijacked, vandalized, or whatever the case is—it was a human person, a gamer, it was a young kid working from their apartment somewhere, they could virtually navigate that robot so that if it flipped over on its side or whatever, it would take manual control over it, set it right back up, and find it and do whatever it needed to do. So that's an actual role that was created.” Kate: While many people fear that as jobs disappear, people will have to survive without work — or rather, without the jobs that provide them with a livelihood, an income, a team to work with, and a sense of contribution — the more comforting truth is that we've always found jobs to replace the ones that went out of fashion. When cars were invented, the horse-and-buggy business became far less profitable, but those workers found something else to do. We shouldn't be glib or dismissive about the need individual workers will have for help in making career transitions, but in the big picture, humans are adaptable, and that isn't something that looks like it will be changing any time soon. Giselle: “Where we're seeing the direction of work going right now, people want to have more agency over how they work, where they work, themselves, etc. I think people want to own how they show up in the world, people want to own more of their financial abilities, they want to keep more of their pay… If you just wade through all of the buzzwords that are coming out lately, people want to imagine a different world of work. The future of work should be a place where people are encouraged to bring their true full selves to the table, and that they're heard. I think we've had way too much of a focus on customer experience because we're trying to drive profitability and revenue, but internally, behind the scenes, that's another story that we really need to work on.” Kate: The more aware we are of the way things are changing, the better able we are to prepare for the future we want. Even in the face of automation and constantly-evolving technologies, humans are adaptable. One thing that won't be changing any time soon? Workers aren't going to stop craving agency over their jobs and their lives, and employers aren't going to stop needing to hire talented and high-value employees to help their businesses thrive. Hopefully you've heard a few ideas in this episode of ways to lean into the change and make your business, or your life, a little bit better. Even more hopeful is the possibility that, after so much disruption and uncertainty, we may be entering a moment where more people at every stage of employment feel more empowered about their work: freer to express their whole selves in the workplace, and able to do work that is about more than paying the bills. That's a trend worth working toward. Thank you so much for joining me this week on The Tech Humanist Show. In our next episode, I'm talking about why it behooves businesses to focusing on the human experience of buying their product or service, rather than the customer experience. I'll see you then.

In this episode, Jenny Huberman speaks with anthropologist, media scholar, and Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, Mary L. Gray. They discuss Mary's highly acclaimed book, Ghost Work: How to prevent Silicon Valley from creating a Global Underclass, which she co-authored with Siddharth Suri. Their conversation explores the experiences of on-demand platform workers, as well as the way the platform economy is changing conceptions of work and employment more generally. In discussing how digital technologies are radically reconfiguring work for millions of people around the globe, Mary also challenges the idea that digital technologies will inevitably render human labor obsolete in the future. Humans, she reminds us, do certain kinds of work that cannot be attended to by A.I. or other automated processes, and thus, they are likely to remain “in the loop” for many years to come.

Jeremy Howard is a data scientist, researcher, developer, educator, and entrepreneur. Jeremy is a founding researcher at fast.ai, a research institute dedicated to making deep learning more accessible. He is also a Distinguished Research Scientist at the University of San Francisco, the chair of WAMRI, and is Chief Scientist at platform.ai. In this conversation, we'll be talking about the history of data science, machine learning, and AI, where we've come from and where we're going, how new techniques can be applied to real-world problems, whether it be deep learning to medicine or porting techniques from computer vision to NLP. We'll also talk about what's present and what's missing in the ML skills revolution, what software engineering skills data scientists need to learn, how to cope in a space of such fragmented tooling, and paths for emerging out of the shadow of FAANG. If that's not enough, we'll jump into how spreading DS skills around the globe involves serious investments in education, building software, communities, and research, along with diving into the social challenges that the information age and the AI revolution (so to speak) bring with it. But to get to all of this, you'll need to listen to a few minutes of us chatting about chocolate biscuits in Australia! Links * fast.ai · making neural nets uncool again * nbdev: create delightful python projects using Jupyter Notebooks (https://github.com/fastai/nbdev) * The fastai book, published as Jupyter Notebooks (https://github.com/fastai/fastbook) * Deep Learning for Coders with fastai and PyTorch (https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/deep-learning-for/9781492045519/) * The wonderful and terrifying implications of computers that can learn (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4kyRyKyOpo) -- Jeremy' awesome TED talk! * Manna (https://marshallbrain.com/manna) by Marshall Brain * Ghost Work (https://ghostwork.info/) by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri * Uberland (https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520324800/uberland) by Alex Rosenblat

In anticipation of the launch of Michael's new book, we're reaching into the vaults to pull the best episodes for you. Want to preorder? Go to HowToBegin.com  We are all investors. Whether it concerns our time, our focus or our money, we choose where we want to put it. When you invest, the first question always asked is ‘What is the rate of return?' What if the question was ‘What does the most good?' In this episode, Swati Mylavarapu introduces us to her values-based venture capital fund and discusses the significance of humanising the workplace beyond an aim for profit and technological advancement. Swati is co-founder of Incite.org, a brilliant strategist and a forceful good in the world.  Swati reads two pages from ‘Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass' by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri. [reading begins at 16:20] Hear us talk about: What ‘world-positive' means from an investment standpoint: ‘Being an investor requires being a concerned and active citizen.' [2:30] | What Swati offers as a non-traditional venture capitalist. [7:11] | Building and shaping new technology ventures. [22:01] | What influences investment decisions? [24:23] | The value-based diligence process when picking companies to invest in. [25:28] | The modern meaning of ‘work.' [29:25]

This week, I am once again reunited with my co-host and collaborator, Jackson Best to dive back into part II of our conversation on the 5 leadership essentials that all leaders should have going into the future of work.   In the previous episode, we explored three out of five must-have qualities that leaders should have as they are leading their organizations, teams, and employees through and beyond the pandemic. In this episode, we're exploring the final two must-haves (and perhaps the most important): acting with integrity and maintaining a talent mindset. And, as a bonus, make sure to stay tuned until the end as we throw in one extra must-have quality that you need to have on your radar to future-proof yourself as a leader!   There were so many invaluable nuggets of wisdom in this episode so be sure to tune in!   Key Takeaways: [:50] Reuniting with Jackson Best for part II of our conversation! [1:44] Jackson provides a recap of the previous episode. [4:55] Our 4th leadership must-have: acting with integrity. [6:58] Are our leaders today acting with integrity? What does integrity really mean? [9:01] Themes of integrity. [9:45] The forms that fear can take in the workplace, and what leaders can do to overcome these fears and maintain integrity. [14:13] How fear can permeate an organization's culture and create a toxic environment. [19:10] How to regain trust as a leader. [22:08] Our 5th leadership must-have: maintaining a talent mindset. [22:41] Why it is so critical to maintain an open talent mindset. [26:45] Discussing the concept of the ghost economy. [28:37] All talent matters (and what you can do to show that in your organization.) [29:11] The value of optimizing talent. [34:18] Our bonus leadership must-have (that will be critical for all leaders going forward!) [37:45] How to get in touch with me for personal consulting. [38:57] Closing out the show.   Mentioned in this Episode: Fifth Dimensional Leadership Ep. 32: “The Future of Work: 5 Leadership Essentials - Part I” (Previous Episode) Jack Welch Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass, by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri Ginny@GinnyClarke.com  Ginny Clarke on Leading Authorities   About Fifth Dimensional Leadership & Ginny Clarke Fifth-Dimensional Leadership is a podcast about leadership — knowing yourself, speaking your truth, inspiring love, expanding your consciousness and activating your mastery. As an executive recruiter and career expert currently leading executive recruiting at a Fortune 20 tech company, Ginny Clarke is a passionate and authentic thought leader with a unique and deliberate perspective on work and life. She synthesizes aspects of her life as an African-American single mother who has successfully navigated corporate America for over 30 years. She has inspired, uplifted, and changed the lives of thousands and is intentional about bringing conscious awareness to people of all ages and stages.   Every other week, a new edition of Fifth-Dimensional Leadership will include fascinating guests, covering a variety of topics: power, personal branding, self-awareness, networking, fear, and career management.   Stay Connected! To find more episodes or learn more, visit: GinnyClarke.com Connect with her on social media: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Youtube

We are all investors. Whether it concerns our time, our focus, or our money, we choose where we want to put it. When you invest, the first question always asked is ‘What is the rate of return?' What if the question was ‘What does the most good?' In this episode, Swati Mylavarapu introduces us to her values-based venture capital fund and discusses the significance of humanising the workplace beyond an aim for profit and technological advancement. Swati is co-founder of Incite.org, a brilliant strategist, and a forceful good in the world. Get‌ ‌book‌ ‌links‌ ‌and‌ ‌resources‌ ‌at‌ https://www.mbs.works/2-pages-podcast/  Swati reads two pages from ‘Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass' by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri. [reading begins at 15:04] Hear us talk about: What ‘world positive means from an investment standpoint: ‘Being an investor requires being a concerned and active citizen.' [1:14] | What Swati offers as a non-traditional venture capitalist. [5:55] | Building and shaping new technology ventures. [20:45] | What influences investment decisions? [23:07] | The value-based diligence process when picking companies to invest in. [24:12] | The modern meaning of ‘work.' [28:09]

We're taking a week off recording so we're unlocking one of our favorite episodes from the Patreon feed for you to enjoy. Cold open: Ghost in the Shell. There is a long list of services that purport to be powered by sophisticated software, but actually rely on humans acting like robots. We discuss a critical concept—whether we call it Potemkin AI, fauxtomation, or ghost work—for understanding how so much so-called artificial intelligence is just a spectacle, a simulation, designed to mystify the labor that really turns the crank of smart systems sold as advanced innovations. They are the humans hidden inside mechanical minds. Some stuff we reference: • Potemkin AI | Jathan Sadowski: https://reallifemag.com/potemkin-ai/ • The Automation Charade | Astra Taylor: https://logicmag.io/failure/the-automation-charade/ • Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass | Mary L. Gray Siddharth Suri: https://ghostwork.info/ • Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media | Sarah T. Roberts: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300235883/behind-screen • Difference and Dependence among Digital Workers: The Case of Amazon Mechanical Turk | Lilly Irani: https://read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlantic-quarterly/article-abstract/114/1/225/3763/Difference-and-Dependence-among-Digital-Workers Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

Although we usually focus on the ways AI can displace workers, this technology can also create new jobs and help them. In this episode, Saiph Savage joins Chris Grundemann and Stephen Foskett to discuss the many ways AI can help displaced workers. One new type of job created by AI is in the area of model training, and this can help develop digital skills and improve the lives of workers. Digital labor platforms tend to be opaque, however, and we must audit them to understand the wages paid, exposure to negative content, and invisible labor workers do to continue to use these tools. Yet despite these shortcomings, many workers report positive experiences, in terms of life/work balance, opportunity, and flexibility. Researchers like Savage are monitoring these opportunities and developing tools to help workers and policymakers fairly judge the costs and benefits of participating. Ultimately, these jobs can become a stepping stone to digital careers and further opportunities. References Saiph Savage's Super Turker paper Flexible Work and Personal Digital Infrastructures Turker Tales: Integrating Tangential Play into Crowd Work “Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass” by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri (book) Three Questions How long will it take for a conversational AI to pass the Turing test and fool an average person? Are there any jobs that will be completely eliminated by AI in the next five years? Can you think of any fields that have not yet been touched by AI? Guests and Hosts Saiph Savage, Assistant Professor at Northeastern University. Connect with Saiph on LinkedIn or on Twitter at @Saiphcita. Chris Grundemann, Gigaom Analyst and Managing Director at Grundemann Technology Solutions. Connect with Chris on ChrisGrundemann.com on Twitter at @ChrisGrundemann. Stephen Foskett, Publisher of Gestalt IT and Organizer of Tech Field Day. Find Stephen's writing at GestaltIT.com and on Twitter at @SFoskett. Date: 7/20/2021 Tags: @Saiphcita, @SFoskett, @ChrisGrundemann

There is an invisible, on-demand workforce of gig workers who fuel services offered by digital platforms like Google, Amazon, Uber and Microsoft. In this episode, we hear from researcher Mary L. Gray who says this kind of work—possible through the magic of AI and APIs—is becoming more common, and for good reason. It typically offers flexibility for workers and cost savings for businesses. The only problem? We might need to revamp our entire social safety net to support a workforce of free agents.

Working for low wages and few benefits, a large but invisible workforce keeps the internet running. Through her research, Mary L. Gray sheds light on the workers—many of them women caring for young children and elders—who support the technology industry and the lack of regulations governing their labor. Mary L. Gray, senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research, 2020 MacArthur fellow, and coauthor of the book Ghost Work, discusses what governments and the technology industry can do to address this emerging fault line of inequality.

Cold open: Ghost in the Shell There is a long list of services that purport to be powered by sophisticated software, but actually rely on humans acting like robots. We discuss a critical concept—whether we call it Potemkin AI, fauxtomation, or ghost work—for understanding how so much so-called artificial intelligence is just a spectacle, a simulation, designed to mystify the labor that really turns the crank of smart systems sold as advanced innovations. They are the humans hidden inside mechanical minds. Some stuff we reference: • Potemkin AI | Jathan Sadowski: https://reallifemag.com/potemkin-ai/ • The Automation Charade | Astra Taylor: https://logicmag.io/failure/the-automation-charade/ • Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass | Mary L. Gray Siddharth Suri: https://ghostwork.info/ • Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media | Sarah T. Roberts: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300235883/behind-screen • Difference and Dependence among Digital Workers: The Case of Amazon Mechanical Turk | Lilly Irani: https://read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlantic-quarterly/article-abstract/114/1/225/3763/Difference-and-Dependence-among-Digital-Workers Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills TMK shirts are now available here: bonfire.com/mech-luddite/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

In today's episode, we reflect on the concepts of community and fellowship in the world of those practicing anthropology. We ask Mary and Elizabeth about the relationship that they have with their discipline and the community of practitioners within it.  What do they feel they need from colleagues, critics and journals – all of which form the axis of the anthropological community? How to be excellent without being elitist and violent but instead generous and welcoming? Is there room for imagining that failure is a building exercise? How to be fully present for each other without undermining the critical interrogation? How to transform a conflict into a conversation? Stay with us throughout this reflective episode in which abstract questions are approached with very concrete and personal perspectives.Mary L. Gray is a Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research as well as an E.J. Safra Center for Ethics Fellow and Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society Faculty Affiliate at Harvard University. Mary holds an M.A. in Anthropology from San Francisco State University and a Ph.D. in communications at University of California, San Diego. She also serves on the Executive Board of Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R) and is a past board member of the American Anthropological Association. More recently, Mary has also turned her attention to the emerging field of AI and ethics, focusing on research methods that bring computer and social sciences together.Elizabeth J Chin is a professor at Art Centre College of Design in Pasadena and the Editor-in-Chief of the American Anthropologist. She holds a double major degree in Drama and Anthropology from New York University and a PhD in Anthropology from the City University of New York. Her work spans a variety of topics–race, consumption, Barbie–but nearly always engages marginalized youth in collaboratively taking on the complexities of the world around them. Taking writing very seriously, Elizabeth's work increasingly investigates the ethnographic voice with an eye toward decolonizing anthropological knowledge as it appears on the page.

My guest this week, Dr Caroline Sheedy, researches gender inequalities in the area of technology workplaces . Caroline is a recipient of the very prestigious Fulbright Tech Impact Scholarship, and is also a member of INGENICS, The Irish Network for Gender Equality in Computing. Caroline talks about the importance of creating inclusive, supportive workspaces for all members of society, including our young men. And that we need to reimagine our overall work-life-caring roles for the benefit of everyone’s wellbeing, as oppose to viewing ourselves always in a productive manner, here solely to serve a workforce.As we conclude in our chat today, this is a conversation of many conversations that need to persist until we all find a healthier solution to toxic workspaces and unbalanced work lives. TOPICS DISCUSSED: Caroline’s motivation to study STEM subjects as a young girl –engaging teachers who encouraged girl’s participation in STEM Recognises a distinct minority of female lecturers in STEM subjects The Art of Cryptography! The trajectory of women in technology & the importance of social inclusion “You can’t be, what you can’t see” applies to women working within the tech industrySense of Belonging so important in the workplace‘The right to reply’ Technochauvinism / “Hi-tech is Guy-tech” Universal Design in Technology Technology facilitating social connectionUnconscious Bias Fertility – women putting off starting families due to precarious working conditions Women carrying the carer’s burden in societyLack of adequate, affordable childcare the major factor in carers dropping out of full-time workforceFailing future generations by not providing them adequate and equal early education opportunities All caring professions need to be valued more in our society We need to invest more in our own wellbeing, rather than serving the workforce The pace of change in tech – rapidly changes our pace of social change SOURCES MENTIONED:Fulbright Irish Scholar Awards: https://www.fulbright.ie/going-to-the-usa/fulbright-irish-scholar-awards/Code: Debugging the Gender Gap movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code:_Debugging_the_Gender_GapWork Equal - a campaign to raise awareness of workplace gender inequalities and related issues: https://workequal.ie/Dr Mary L. Gray, (MacArthur Fellow) Anthropologist & Media Scholar: https://www.macfound.org/fellows/1061/Prof Nicola Ingram: https://www.shu.ac.uk/about-us/our-people/staff-profiles/nicola-ingramDr Theresa O'Keefe (UCC) research on gender inequality and precarious work situations in academia as referenced in The Journal.ie : https://www.thejournal.ie/academic-uncertainty-pt2-5265743-Nov2020/________________________________ Subscribe to YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/3jLTdaqRate & review Journeying on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/journeying/id1529912826Like Facebook Page: https://bit.ly/33kp4bU

The MacArthur Foundation recently announced its 2020 MacArthur Fellows, which include two BKC Faculty Associates, Tressie McMillan Cottom and Mary Gray. Watch Cottom and Gray discuss their previous and forthcoming projects as well as explore the intersections of their equally impressive research. The event was moderated by Joan Donovan. Tressie McMillan Cottom is an associate professor in the School of Information and Library Science and senior research fellow with the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and author, most recently, of Thick: And Other Essays. Mary L. Gray is Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and Faculty Associate at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Joan Donovan is the Research Director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. Dr. Donovan leads the field in examining internet and technology studies, online extremism, media manipulation, and disinformation campaigns.

Mary L. Gray is a Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research as well as an E.J. Safra Center for Ethics Fellow and Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society Faculty Affiliate at Harvard University. Mary also maintains a faculty position in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering with affiliations in Anthropology and Gender Studies at Indiana University.Prior to that, Mary obtained her B.A. in Anthropology and Native American studies at University of California, Davis, a M.A. in Anthropology from San Francisco State University and a Ph.D. in communications at University of California, San Diego. She also serves on the Executive Board of Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R) and is a past board member of the American Anthropological Association.Her single-authored work takes up interests in how we do ethnographically-informed media research and the implications of media in the lives of those who have limited access to it or contribute to information and data economies in ways that often go unnoticed. More recently, Mary has also turned her attention to the emerging field of AI and ethics, focusing on research methods that bring computer and social sciences together We are delighted to be talking to Mary today! Her impressive career path at the intersection of business and academia shows that it is possible to develop both as a scholar and a practitioner of anthropology. We ask Mary to go back in time to when she discovered her anthropological side and share how it manifested itself She speaks to the key role curiosity has played and continues to play in her life and career. We ask her several questions. How much freedom to contest, reflect and choose does a researcher have when working in the Microsoft Research team? What does it take for a company to create knowledge and when should that knowledge be public or private? At the end Mary reflects on her own positionality and means to continuously re-center and the special place that scholarly communities have in this process.Mentioned in podcast:Mary L. Gray, Siddharth Suri, Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass, 2019 ( https://ghostwork.info/ )Social media:Biography: https://marylgray.org/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marylgraymsr/Twitter: https://twitter.com/marylgray?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

You didn’t already know? Nerdette talked with two brand new MacArthur Fellows — also known as MacArthur “geniuses” — about the important work they’re doing and what it’s like to get that phone call. Mary L. Gray is an anthropologist and a media scholar honored for her work investigating how “labor, identity, and human rights are transformed by the digital economy.” And Damien Fair is a cognitive neuroscientist honored for his research on the developing human brain.

‘The future of work is people’ We are now living in a world that is moving toward automation and Artificial Intelligence, but does this mean that we will no longer need the human workforce? Or do we need them more than ever? To find out more about Ghost Workers and our future with AI, join our conversation with the author of Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass, Mary L. Gray.   Listen out for: What is Ghost Work?  Will AI replace humans in the workforce?  The alarming challenges of Ghost Work.  Can companies pay less and get high-quality cognitive work?   Resources: Click here to grab a copy of Mary L Gray’s book Ghost Work   To bring Mindvalley’s ideas to your company check out www.mindvalley.com/superhumans   Like this episode?  Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Share this with your friends on Instagram or Twitter. 

Open google, type a word or a phrase, any phrase... red car, modern couch, dog, and a slew of results will populate your browser window. Who is responsible for the avalanche information that lies just a few keystrokes away? Are there downsides to this world of information accessibility? Our guest this week, Mary L. Gray lives to answer these questions and attempts to do so in her new book, Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass. The book, written with co-author Siddharth Suri, tackles explaining the new and ever-changing workforce responsible for captioning photos, flagging and removing inappropriate content, or even writing, designing or coding a project to move it along. Mary and Siddharth explore the lives of these workers – ghost workers – exposing a world marked by low pay, no benefits and wildly unpredictable income. An estimated 8 percent of Americans have worked at least once in this “ghost economy,” and that number is growing. Mary L. Gray is a Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and Faculty Associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Along with her research, Mary teaches at Indiana University, maintaining an appointment as an Associate Professor of the Media School, with affiliations in American Studies, Anthropology, and Gender Studies. For a complete transcript and links from this episode, please visit: https://whitneyjohnson.com/Mary-L-Gray

In what way does technology make us more or less visible to each other? What is Ghost Work and how might it impact the future of work? How can AI Ethicists relate more intimately with compassion? To answer these questions and more we welcome Dr. Mary L. Gray to the show.    Dr. Mary L. Gray is a Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and Faculty Associate at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Along with her research, Mary teaches at Indiana University, maintaining an appointment as an Associate Professor of the Media School, with affiliations in American Studies, Anthropology, and Gender Studies. She is also the co-author, with Siddharth Suri, of Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass. Mary is an anthropologist and media scholar by training, and focuses on how everyday uses of technologies transform people's lives.   Full show notes for this episode can be found at Radicalai.org.    If you enjoy this episode please make sure to subscribe, submit a rating and review, and connect with us on twitter at twitter.com/radicalaipod

"We are living through the tech-enabled unraveling of full-time employment itself," says anthropologist Mary L. Gray. As the pandemic exposes and accelerates the shift to on-demand online labor, Gray takes us inside the jobs being created to solve the problems artificial intelligence can't handle -- and explains why our economic recovery hinges on extending essential benefits to all workers. (This virtual conversation, hosted by TED business curator Corey Hajim, was recorded July 6, 2020.)

"We are living through the tech-enabled unraveling of full-time employment itself," says anthropologist Mary L. Gray. As the pandemic exposes and accelerates the shift to on-demand online labor, Gray takes us inside the jobs being created to solve the problems artificial intelligence can't handle -- and explains why our economic recovery hinges on extending essential benefits to all workers. (This virtual conversation, hosted by TED business curator Corey Hajim, was recorded July 6, 2020.)

Mary L. Gray is a Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research as well as an E.J. Safra Center for Ethics Fellow and Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society Faculty Affiliate at Harvard University. Mary also maintains a faculty position in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering with affiliations in Anthropology and Gender Studies at Indiana University. Mary, an anthropologist and media scholar by training, focuses on how everyday uses of technologies transform people’s lives. Enjoy the show! We speak about: [00:30] About Mary L. Gray [04:25] What’s it like in the Microsoft Research Center? [06:25] What surprised you the most about researching with Microsoft? [08:40] Is your work focused mostly in the United States? [10:10] Is your previous work focused on the social side of technology? [14:40] What other interesting viewpoints did you learn during your research? [24:00] How are people’s work lives being shaped by AI? [35:30] How is automation going to affect the execution of algorithms in specialized fields? [42:40] How do you see AI evolving in different countries? Resources: Mary’s Website: https://marylgray.org Mary’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/marylgray Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass In Your Face: Stories from the Lives of Queer Youth, Queering the Countryside: New Directions in Rural Queer Studies Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America Quotes: “I love studying gender and sexuality because it is so intimate.” “If we are constantly interacting with each other, we can constantly transform into different senses of who we are.” “When you introduce new technologies, it is shaping conversations.” “The work of data science is a global project.” Thank you to our sponsors: Fyrebox - Make Your Own Quiz! RMIT Online Master of Data Science Strategy and Leadership Gain the advanced strategic, leadership and data science capabilities required to influence executive leadership teams and deliver organisation-wide solutions. We are RUBIX. - one of Australia’s leading pure data consulting companies delivering project outcomes for some of the world’s leading brands. Visit online.rmit.edu.au for more information And as always, we appreciate your Reviews, Follows, Likes, Shares and Ratings. Thank you so much for listening. Enjoy the show! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/datafuturology/message

Want to know how to get social at work even if you're in a remote team? Mary L Gray explains how the human workforce is in the middle of a software centered work culture and how remote workers can find a purpose in what they do. In this episode, Mary explains how our capitalist system dictates the productivity rhythm of job growth, the introduction and transition to new work models such as remote work. She also shares how these new work models have an impact in economy and society.

Mary L. Gray is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and Faculty Affiliate at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Using the tools of anthropology and critical media studies, Mary explored how material conditions and everyday uses of technologies transform people's lives, particularly in places where technological access is hard to come by. I invited Mary onto the Tech Talks Daily Podcast to talk about her book "Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass," which she co-authored with computer scientist Siddharth Suri. In the book she explores the lives of people paid to train artificial intelligence and, increasingly, serve as "humans in the loop" delivering on-demand services. Hidden beneath the surface of the web, lost in our wrong-headed debates about AI, a new menace is looming. I learn how services delivered by companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Uber can only function smoothly thanks to the judgment and experience of a vast, invisible human labor force. These people doing "ghost work" make the internet seem smart. They perform high-tech piecework: flagging X-rated content, proofreading, designing engine parts, and much more. An estimated 8 percent of Americans have worked at least once in this "ghost economy," and that number is growing. They usually earn less than legal minimums for traditional work, they have no health benefits, and they can be fired at any time for any reason, or none. There are no labor laws to govern this kind of work, and these latter-day assembly lines draw in--and all too often overwork and underpay--a surprisingly diverse range of workers: harried young mothers, professionals forced into early retirement, recent grads who can't get a toehold on the traditional employment ladder, and minorities shut out of the jobs they want.  

Siddharth Suri is a computational social scientist whose research interests lie at the intersection of computer science, behavioral economics, and crowdsourcing. His current work centers around the crowd workers who power many modern apps, websites, and artificial intelligence (AI) systems. This work culminated in a book he coauthored with Mary L. Gray titled Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass (May 2019).

Playing for Team Human today, Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research and Fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Mary L. Gray.Mary L. Gray joins Team Human to share her research into the invisible human workforce that powers the web. In her new co-authored book, Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass, Gray explores the assumptions made about the content moderators, proofreaders and AI-trainers that make the internet seem so smart. Despite the common idea that this low-paid workforce is exploited, this episode shows the ways in which the 'ghost economy’ might actually provide opportunity for those who choose to participate in it.This week’s Team Human also includes a monologue recorded live from Betaworks Studio’s recent event on humane technology, “Human After All - Humanistic Technology for a New Era”.You can find out more about Mary’s work at: https://ghostwork.infoYou can find out more about Betaworks Studios: https://betaworks-studios.com You can also find out more about all of our guests, listen to past shows, find out about upcoming live events, and become a contributing subscriber by visiting us at TeamHuman.fmYou can read written versions of Rushkoff’s show monologues at Medium. Team Human is made possible thanks to the generous support of our listeners on Patreon. Your support makes the hours of labor that go into each show possible.You can also help by reviewing the show on iTunes.On this episode you heard Fugazi’s “Foreman’s Dog” in the intro thanks to the kindness of the band and Dischord Records.Team Human is a production of the Laboratory for Digital Humanism at Queens CUNY. Our new producer is Josh Chapdelaine, Luke Robert Mason edited and mixed this show, and Stephen Bartolomei is an invisible, but hard at work on very human things. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Anthropologist Mary L. Gray shares her latest book, "Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass," a collaboration with computer scientist Siddharth Suri. "Ghost Work" is a necessary and revelatory exposé 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. This book unveils how services delivered by companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Uber can only function smoothly thanks to the judgment and experience of a vast, invisible human labor force. These people doing “ghost work” make the internet seem smart. They perform high-tech piecework: flagging X-rated content, proofreading, designing engine parts, and much more. An estimated 8 percent of Americans have worked at least once in this “ghost economy,” and that number is growing. They usually earn less than legal minimums for traditional work, they have no health benefits, and they can be fired at any time for any reason, or none. There are no labor laws to govern this kind of work, and these latter-day assembly lines draw in—and all too often overwork and underpay—a surprisingly diverse range of workers: harried young mothers, professionals forced into early retirement, recent grads who can't get a toehold on the traditional employment ladder, and minorities shut out of the jobs they want. Gray and Suri also show how ghost workers, employers, and society at large can ensure that this new kind of work creates opportunity—rather than misery—for those who do it. Amara.org co-founder Dean Jansen joins Mary in a conversation moderated by Data & Society's Director of Research Sareeta Amrute.

Article: Out in the Country: not just somewhere in the Midwest Category: Communication and Media Studies Keywords: youth, media, queer visibility, rural America, America, LGBT, transgender, gay marriage, sexuality Blurb on the Website: Lucy Martirosyan, Avalon Lustick and Alyson Durlin discuss Mary L. Gray’s book, Out in the Country: Youth, Media and Queer Visibility in Rural America (2009). Podcast length: 8:59 Number of speakers: 4 Quality of podcast: Near broadcast quality Any Accents: No Labelling: SMS Podcast

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Kristen Schilt and Chase Joynt, speaking at today's Wednesday Lunch program at The Divinity Schoool/ Schilt, Assistant Professor of Sociology, and multi-media artist Chase Joynt are conducting a year-long collaborative project. Sponsored by a Mellon Fellowship in Arts Practice & Scholarship at the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, their project explores the construction of public narratives about transgender identities. The collaborators will create a series of multi-media installations that deploy and disrupt positions of scholarly, artistic and experiential authority. Wednesday Lunch is a Divinity School tradition started many decades ago. At noon on Wednesdays when the quarter is in session a delicious vegetarian meal is made in the Swift Hall kitchen by our student chefs and lunch crew. Once the three-course meal has reached dessert each week there is a talk by a faculty member or student from throughout the University, a community member from the greater Chicago area, or a guest from a wider distance. Recorded in Swift Hall on April 30, 2014.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Kristen Schilt and Chase Joynt, speaking at today's Wednesday Lunch program at The Divinity Schoool/ Schilt, Assistant Professor of Sociology, and multi-media artist Chase Joynt are conducting a year-long collaborative project. Sponsored by a Mellon Fellowship in Arts Practice & Scholarship at the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, their project explores the construction of public narratives about transgender identities. The collaborators will create a series of multi-media installations that deploy and disrupt positions of scholarly, artistic and experiential authority. Wednesday Lunch is a Divinity School tradition started many decades ago. At noon on Wednesdays when the quarter is in session a delicious vegetarian meal is made in the Swift Hall kitchen by our student chefs and lunch crew. Once the three-course meal has reached dessert each week there is a talk by a faculty member or student from throughout the University, a community member from the greater Chicago area, or a guest from a wider distance. Recorded in Swift Hall on April 30, 2014.

Recent provocations (boyd and Crawford, 2011) about the role of "big data" in human communication research and technology studies deserve an outline of the value of anthropology, as a particular kind of "big data". Mary L. Gray, Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research New England and Associate Professor of Communication and Culture at Indiana University, will walk through the different dimensions of social inquiry that fall under the rubric of "big data". She argues for attending to different dimensions rather than scales of data, more collaborative approaches to how we arrive at what we (think we) know, and critical analysis of the cultural assumptions embedded in the data we collect. By moving from the "snapshot" of quantitative work to the "time-lapse photography" of ethnography, she suggests that researchers must imagine "big data" as an on-going process of modeling, triangulation, and critique. Gray's current research includes work on ethnographically-informed social media research, compliance cyberinfrastructures in universities and their impact on emerging media research, online labour, and the importance of location and place in the context of mobile technologies. Her book Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America examined how youth in rural parts of the United States fashioned "queer" senses of gender and sexual identity and the role that media--particularly internet access--played in their lives and political work.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. This spring's groundbreaking "Comics: Philosophy and Practice" conference, sponsored by the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, was the first conference held in the newly opened Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts. The conference brought together 17 legendary cartoonists for three days of discussion about the past and future of graphic narrative. Conference participants included cartoonists Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel, and Robert Crumb, among other notable artists.

Rural communities don’t usually have the same support networks for queer youth that you might find in big cities or college towns. Mary L. Gray spent two years working in small rural communities in Kentucky, and found that as queer youth are forming their identities here, the experiences they have in the real world often blur with experiences with communities and peer groups online. Mary calls the blending of town squares, churches, schools, and community centers in real life, and their virtual counterparts Boundary Publics. And the way these boundary publics function as support networks and outlets for expression can make a real difference in the lives of young people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and questioning. Mary L. Gray is from the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University, and is the author of Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America.