Following its glowing review in the journal Science last month, Waiting for Robots: The Hidden Hands of Automation (University of Chicago Press, 2025) has now been selected by Nature as one of its top science picks.
In its write-up, Nature underscores the book’s key argument: automation is never as autonomous as it seems—it’s powered by human labor, often invisible and undervalued. Drawing an evocative historical parallel, the review states:
“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 Antonio 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 Hidden Hands of Automation.”
Having both Science and Nature highlight the book in consecutive months is an incredible acknowledgment of its impact—unprecedented for a book about the sociology of work underlying AI technologies.