Automation is not simply a technological process.

It often involves hybrid forms of task fulfillment, which rely on machine learning and poorly paid workers.

Hello. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us.

I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Phil Jones.

Phil is the author of Work Without the Worker, Labor in the Age of Platform Capitalism,

and he's also a researcher at the autonomy think tank. Phil's book is an

essential contribution to our understanding of work in the 21st century under the internet,

these platforms, and the digital technologies that we are all used to and surrounded with.

In recent years, more and more of our society is said to be or promised to be automated or taken over by computers thanks to AI and automation.

However, Phil's book shows that so many of those tasks that we think are being done by computers are actually being outsourced to very poorly paid human

workers who are working through platforms where the tasks that they do can be as short as

30 seconds to check things for a so-called automated system. Whereas when we see it, we think,

oh, okay, that's just all being done by

the computer. Wow, look at how advanced this is. Well, that's not always the case. And if you

thought that the gig economy was bad, these workers on what Phil calls micro-work platforms are often

in even worse conditions. The pay is terrible.

There's constant precarity because it's easy for contractors not to pay the workers,

even when they complete a task in the way that the contractor wanted it.

And they spend a whole lot of time looking for and competing for tasks instead of actually doing the work.

And companies and organizations that promote this form of work

take advantage of people who are in incredibly desperate situations,

including in refugee camps, to do this kind of work

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