Work Without the Worker: Labour in the Age of Platform Capitalism - Phil Jones
Published in 2021 by Verso, London, UK and Brooklyn, NY
144 pages
ISBN: 978-1-83976-043-3
Everywhere we look, we can see the increasing role of automation in everyday life. AI has become increasingly commodified, reaching into various sectors of industry and everyday use. From the targeted algorithms that drive engagement on social media sites such as TikTok to the increased use of ChatGTP and Art AI generators to simulate works of literature and art within seconds, we can find plenty of examples of machine learning and artificial intelligence being utilized in everyday life.
Aside from these seemingly trivial uses, artificial intelligence has been touted by many in the technology sector as a pathway to the future of humanity. Transhumanists flock to the latest technological developments as a ticket for human evolution and immortality. Techno-utopians sell us the vision that technology will ultimately overcome the contradictions and crises that threaten humanity. In reality, the results of AI and automation have been much more deleterious than the starry-eyed Silicon Valley venture capitalists would like to portray.
In creating and promoting these innovative and increasingly intrusive software systems, we often do not consider the physical production of the data that supports these platforms. While most of us are aware of the exploitative and highly unethical practice of using child labor to mine the cobalt that is necessary for the physical production of iPhones, most of us are completely unaware of how data is likewise produced by exploitative human labor. This labor is often rendered invisible through the employment of automation and AI, contributing to the rapid increase in workers relying on precarious employment and short-term gig jobs to survive.
The obfuscation of labor is especially pervasive in the reproduction of data. While we tend to think that this data is produced by automated machines, we often ignore the labor of moderators, data annotators and cleaners, and predictive modelers. Behind the veil of “smart machines'' lies a vast army of laborers who work sporadic hours for literal pennies on the dollar. In his 2021 book, Work Without the Worker: Labour in the Age of Platform Capitalism, author Phil Jones pulls back the curtain on this often hidden dimension of platform capitalism: microwork conducted by precarious workers, primarily in the Global South.
Overview:
In this brief volume, Jones investigates the growth of a kind of employment known as microwork. Microwork refers to a small, menial task that cannot be reliably or quickly completed by an algorithm or computer, and must be done by an actual human (such as completing a survey or tagging data). In this hyper-exploitative form of platform capitalism, high-tech companies break down complex processes that would otherwise require professional employees into small, discrete tasks that can be accomplished in short periods of time by “unskilled” laborers. Currently, more than 20 million people around the world participate in microwork activities for Big Tech companies such as Amazon, Google, Tesla, and Meta. Not only is this work often menial, repetitive, and boring, but it can also be mentally taxing in more extreme ways, such as the workers who must screen and remove images and videos of graphic violence and pornography that are filtered through the algorithm.
Jones investigates how tech companies hide these essential, though low-paid laborers responsible for data production behind the facade of automated algorithms and AI. Microwork, according to Jones, allows these companies to obscure the exploitative labor practices that serve as the backbone for our technological present. Technology has not served to automate work, but instead “informalizes” work into fragmented pieces that further alienate and exploit the laborer from the data they produce.
Workers who complete these small tasks are often kept in the dark about the purpose of their work, such as when a microworker takes on a task from the US military or Defense Department that, unknowingly to the worker, trains automatic drones to identify targets for strikes. This work is often completed by refugees who have been the victims of war, which makes their alienation from their tasks all the more tragic. Additionally, this hidden and piecemeal nature of microwork makes any form of unionization or collective action incredibly difficult, and the lack of legislation around these forms of employment leaves laborers vulnerable to exploitation.
Jones utilizes the example of Amazon's Mechanical Turk, which is a crowdsourcing website that hires remote contract workers for one-off tasks and hides them behind an automated interface. As is common in most gig economy jobs, these workers are considered contractors, which allows Amazon to pay them less than minimum wage or provide them with any kind of benefits. The worker chooses which task to complete, often competing with one another to finish a task first and earn higher payouts. Each task the worker performs earns them a few cents on average and can be completed in only a few minutes (or even seconds). Still, if the task takes too long, then they can remain unpaid (Jones estimates that up to 30% of microworkers regularly go without pay). While payment can be sent to a U.S.-based bank account, workers in the Global South are most often paid in credits that they can redeem through Amazon gift cards that the worker can spend on products through Amazon (replicating the company towns of the later nineteenth-century on a globalized, digital scale).
Microwork is often performed by impoverished populations in the Global South, migrants, prison inmates, and other precarious workers. As such, microwork services have often been deemed as “digital sweatshops” due to the exploitative nature of their treatment of workers as well as the poor working conditions of their laborers. This is not a bug, but rather a feature of platform capitalism, as microwork “is the hidden abode of automation: a globally dispersed complex of refugees, slum dwellers and casualties of occupations, compelled through immiseration, or else law, to power the machine learning of companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon” (13).
For Jones, this model is not novel but finds an analogous historical parallel with the Victorian factory. Microwork, according to Jones, represents the logical next step of neoliberal capitalism, as it relies on a hyper-alienated reserve army of surplus labor that cannot undermine the foundations of capital. Microwork shows us that automation does not inherently rid us of labor, but rather gives it new forms and often hides it from view.
The final section of Jones’s analysis attempts to find ways to unite workers and build solidarity when they’ve been isolated and atomized by platform capitalism. Jones highlights how microworkers have attempted to organize, despite the challenges they face in doing so. For example, microworkers developed a software named “Turkopticon,” which allows Amazon workers to warn one another of shady and bad-faith contractors. He suggests that microwork is not inherently degrading or bad, but rather could be utilized in productive ways that are conducive to social needs as well.
Commendations:
Several dimensions of this work are well worth commending. First of all, Work Without the Worker is an illuminating exploration of an under-examined dimension of our current economic landscape. Jones’s sobering analysis is indicative of a particular moment in the development of neoliberal capitalism and technological development. Using Jones’s analysis, we can see that we currently are in a transitional state, as capitalists rely on the hidden laborers in the Global South to sell consumers the myth of fully automated production, while these workers are training machines to eventually replace them on the labor market. In this way, Jones clears away Silicon Valley’s tendency to obfuscate labor practices as he highlights the dimensions of class struggle within platform capitalism.
Additionally, the volume is relatively compact and free from unnecessary jargon, which makes it an excellent primer for those who are just starting to learn about this lesser-known dimension of microwork and how it functions within our contemporary global economy. He rightly points out the increasing alienation and exploitation of contemporary microwork and how this prevents workers from organizing to better their horrid working conditions. Jones reveals how microworkers are often unaware of the purpose of their tasks, which are often utilized for military and defense purposes, such as training unmanned drones to identify buildings, vehicles, and other potential targets within an urban landscape. This grim dimension of microwork highlights the uneven distribution of power amidst labor relations within our globalized economic hegemony.
Furthermore, Jones dismantles the common myth of the supposed “benefits” of platform work that Silicon Valley so often likes to tout. Gig economy jobs such as Mechanical Turk and Uber provide the fantasy of “being your own boss” and promise greater flexibility and mobility in the laborer’s work. In reality, these jobs increase the worker’s precarity, as workers must piecemeal several gig jobs together to make ends meet or extend the average working day into as many hours as possible. The surplus army of reserved labor ensures that workers compete with one another for lower and lower wages, unable to protest against their conditions due to their ability to be easily replaced. This especially impacts workers in the Global South, who often bear the physical and psychological brunt of this system of hyper-exploitation. As such, Jones’s work gives the reader a much-needed glimpse into this world of microwork that is so often obscured by shiny promises of automation and AI.
The final section of this book is also fascinating, as Jones suggests a potential way for microworkers to resist exploitation, as well as how microwork could be utilized in a future post-capitalist economy. By connecting the burgeoning labor movement across various sectors, including microworkers, Jones brings the relevance of microwork into the labor struggle as workers fight for democracy in the workplace.
Critique:
On the other hand, Work Without the Worker has a few shortcomings as well. Structurally, the book is a bit disorganized, as Jones jumps from example to example of microwork without any cohesive narrative thread. While it is undoubtedly a fascinating journalistic view into the world of microwork, Jones repeats himself quite often throughout each chapter. Especially due to the book’s brief length, Jones’s writing often reads more like a summary of news articles rather than a fully formed and fleshed-out examination of the multifaceted dimensions of microwork.
This becomes more readily apparent when the reader finds that there are no interviews or personal contacts with anyone who performs microwork anywhere in the book. The lack of workers’ voices was especially disappointing, as it would have greatly benefitted to hear directly from those who perform microwork tasks and are routinely exposed to its functioning. Even though Jones attempts to bring Marx into the conversation, a more rigorous Marxist analysis that includes the lived experience of the average microworker would have made for a much more convincing and riveting read.
Accordingly, the book loses its steam as it moves toward its second half. While it does a great job of summarizing microwork and pointing out its glaring flaws, there is very little explication of its connection to the broader trends of globalized platform capitalism. While spending the bulk of the book describing why microwork is detrimental to individuals and perpetuates some of the worst aspects of capitalism, Jones then performs a surprising heel-turn in the last few pages. He speculatively postulates informal, voluntary microwork to be a liberatory force that could be utilized in a post-scarcity world detached from wage labor to secure a better work-life balance.
While Jones often derides theorists who speculate about the future of automation and a post-work world, he finds himself engaged in the same discourse as he speculates about the inevitability of a world that productively channels microwork as a force for self-fulfillment. This was quite a strange end to the book, as he turns away from the possibility of labor unions or a unified socialist strategy to liberate future workers in favor of a microwork-centered utopia. This highly speculative ending to the book, while interesting to think about, ultimately came across as highly unconvincing.
Granted, at barely over 100 pages, it is undoubtedly difficult to dig too deep into the subtleties and nuances of this phenomenon and its future. Yet, the work would have benefitted from either a more rigorous analysis and longer length or more scrupulous editing and first-hand interviews to make it an extended journalistic essay. Without either, the book falls into an ambiguous grey zone that seems to be confused about which audience it should be addressing.
Conclusion:
Overall, Work Without the Worker is a quick and fascinating introductory examination of the hidden labor of microwork that undergirds our fantasies of automation and artificial intelligence. While it can quickly find itself repetitive and falls short in its predictive attempts in its final section, Jones’s analysis is a necessary intervention into the discourses around Silicon Valley labor practices, uneven economic development, and the exploited hidden workers who form the backbone of developing technologies. Around 20 million people around the world are a part of this hidden labor force of microwork, and a greater number comprise the precarious positions of the gig economy that is increasingly coming to define our contemporary labor market. As such, Jones’s short work is a vital read for those of us who want to begin to understand how microwork functions to obscure the exploitive labor of workers, particularly in the Global South, and how we can begin to think of ways to unite across sectors and fight back.