The hidden human labour powering AI: Introducing the Fairwork Action Research Project
This talk addresses a central problem in today’s digital economy: how to hold platform and AI-driven companies accountable for the labour conditions embedded in their business models. As production networks stretch across borders and responsibilities fragment, meaningful oversight becomes harder to secure.
The talk introduces the Fairwork project, an action research methodology designed to hold companies within the AI production network accountable. It examines how the Fairwork methodology has successfully functioned in the gig economy, having scored over 800 companies to date. Fairwork works with platforms to encourage pro-worker changes to policies and practices. Guided by the Fairwork Principles, companies improve conditions for workers and develop safer, fairer businesses. As a result of Fairwork's engagement, dozens of companies have agreed to implement over 400 pro-worker changes, covering all five Fairwork Principles. These changes include ensuring minimum or living wages, GDPR-compliant data management, sickness insurance, contracts aligned with local legislation, anti-discrimination policies, the election of workers’ representatives, and collaboration with local workers' associations. The talk further explores how this methodology will be extended to AI supply chains to compel companies to act more responsibly.
Bio: Mark Graham is the Professor of Internet Geography at the Oxford Internet Institute, a Senior Research Fellow at Green Templeton College, a Research Affiliate in the University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment, a Research Associate at the Centre for Information Technology and National Development in Africa at the University of Cape Town, a Visiting Researcher at the Berlin Social Science Centre, and a Faculty Affiliate at the Institute for the Cooperative Digital Economy (ICDE) at The New School.