I was honored to author the “Digital Labor” (Lavoro Digitale) entry for the Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani, a prestigious European academic institution. This entry synthesizes research on digital labor, encompassing practices like platform work, data labeling, and the human effort behind AI systems. It highlights the reconfiguration of labor by digital technologies and its implications for power, equity, and future work relations. A preprint version of the text is available, and the full entry is published in the Eleventh Appendix of the Enciclopedia Italiana, Volume II.
This achievement coincides with the release of a MicroMega special issue on the social implications of artificial intelligence, where I contributed an essay titled Il Paradosso dell’IA: il lavoro nascosto per creare un futuro senza lavoro (The Paradox of AI: The Hidden Labor of Creating a Jobless Future). The essay explores the extensive human labor required to build systems marketed as labor-replacing technologies. It highlights the roles of data annotators, content moderators, and other hidden workers essential to AI.
Collaborating with scholars like Matteo Pasquinelli, Gloria Origgi, Daniel Andler, and Stephen Holmes, this issue frames critical discussions about AI’s societal impact. Both the Treccani entry and MicroMega essay aim to advance understanding of digital labor and AI’s intersection with work, contributing to policy and academic debates on these subjects.
I encourage readers to explore these works, available through preprints and official publications, and to engage in the ongoing dialogue about the evolving nature of work in the digital era.
Antonio A. Casilli (2024). [Digital Labor] Lavoro Digitale. In: Enciclopedia Italiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Undicesima appendice Volume secondo I-Z, pp. 99-103. Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana “Giovanni Treccani”. https://hal.science/hal-04705286v1
Antonio A. Casilli (2024). [The paradox of AI: the hidden labor of creating a jobless future]. Il paradosso dell’IA: il lavoro nascosto per creare un futuro senza lavoro. MicroMega, 2024(11), 125-136. https://hal.science/hal-04747044v1