Emerging Technologies Speaker Series: Ghost Work in Pandemic Times with Mary Gray, Microsoft Research
“Gray will draw from Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass (her 2019 book, coauthored with computer scientist Siddharth Suri), to argue that public health and economic recovery hinge on reckoning with the value of on-demand workers. The talk will outline the rise of on-demand services and the labor conditions and market flows that organize it. She will connect the global shift away from a shared worksite, co-present colleagues, and secure employment status many are experiencing today to the lessons learned from people who have been navigating ghost work conditions for more than a decade. Gray will end with a warning about another form of ghost work on the horizon: If not stopped now, the drive to develop automated contact tracing could reinforce ‘the paradox of automation’s last mile’—a relentless tech optimism that draws our attention to tech innovation as it elides the value of contingent human labor. Weathering the COVID-19 pandemic will require building technologies that assist and amplify rather than erase trusted healthcare workers.”
“ET Speaker Series: Ghost Work in Pandemic Times with Mary Gray, Microsoft Research” A virtual session with Mary L. Gray, hosted by Jofish Kaye as part of Mozilla’s Emerging Technologies Speaker Series, Mozilla, April 30, 2020
Broadcast and archived on YouTube