As a general rule, I have a critical view of organized religion. Yet, this AI declaration by the friars of the Sacred Convent of St. Francis in Assisi proved unexpectedly aligned with our research priorities at #DiPLab, particularly in its explicit condemnation of both data worker exploitation and environmental destruction.

For some time now, #DiPLab has supported and worked with African content moderators fired by Kenyan platform Samasource. There is some good news: the country's Court of Appeal ruled that Meta can be sued over these layoffs in Kenyan courts. https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/east-africa-news/high-court-rules-facebook-owner-can-be-sued-in-kenya-4770552

We're hiring a postdoc to join the #DiPLab initiative for the interdisciplinary study of online microwork through qualitative & quantitative methods. This position is part of the VOLI project (Voices from Online Labour) led by Paola Tubaro Deadline: Sept 1. https://diplab.eu/3482-2/ #ai #job #hiring

#DiPLab’s @milamiceli launches a ground-breaking data workers inquiry repository. https://diplab.eu/diplabs-milagros-miceli-launches-ground-breaking-data-workers-inquiry-repository/ Join data annotators, moderators, and microtaskers in an online event on July 8, 2024, to talk about new community-based projects where workers produce knowledge & research.

#DiPLab PhD students are doing great research! @noisheek explores disinformation and digital dispossession of Indian workers, while Diego Rivera looks at microwork in Chile. Attend their talks live at our monthly webinar on Wed., June 12, 2PM CEST. Register here https://diplab.eu/diego-rivera-and-aishik-saha-are-guest-speakers-at-our-diplab-seminar-wed-12-june-2024-200-pm-cet/ #india #disinformation #chile #ai #data #digitallabor #crowdwork

So happy to see #diplab Chiara Belletti defend her PhD at @TelecomParis | Institut Polytechnique de Paris. She studied information asymmetries on labor platforms Microworkers & Airbnb. Takingaways: reputation's overrated, quality control costs a lot, platforms can limit info asymmetries by paying workers more .

In today's @libe, I speak about an important aspect of the research we've conducted with #DiPLab over the last few years: what are the career prospects for AI workers? Jobs in AI are often beacons of hope for career advancement, attracting techies and non-techies alike. However, these highly-educated workers get low-paying jobs. With AI, task fragmentation increases, resulting in a global race to the bottom in wages and working conditions. https://www.liberation.fr/societe/petites-mains-de-lia-dans-les-pays-du-sud-il-ny-a-pas-de-carriere-pour-un-microtravailleur-ou-un-moderateur-20240320_FHH32J7IFRAHJKWI2TPXLUUZQU/

Yo folks, a little update on upcoming events over the next couple of weeks.
Feb. 21-22, 2024 Brussels - 4th Transnational Forum on the Alternatives to Uberization. #DiPLab will facilitate a panel featuring microworkers, cloudworkers, internet moderators .https://left.eu/events/transnational-forum-of-alternatives-to-uberisation-4/
#DigitalMicrowork #cloudwork #digitallabor #crowdwork #moderation

We're kicking off our new #DiPLab project tomorrow: Voices from Online Labor (VOLI), is funded by ANR, the French National Research Agency and led by @ptubaro . Sociology, large-scale corpus linguistics, speech technology, and AI are employed ti shed light on emerging digital inequalities. https://diplab.eu/diplabs-voli-project-kickoff-meeting-paris-30-31-jan-2024/

Follow #DiPLab's blog diplab.eu/blog for information on members' activities, media coverage, field reports, past lectures, and upcoming events.

Today Oct. 24, 2023 at 6.30pm CEST, our friend and #DiPLab colleague @milamiceli will give a talk at the John Cabot University in Rome on why we can't have ethical AI without ethical data work.
Live streaming herehttps://www.youtube.com/live/8DoMMQeRC2U #AI #artificialintelligence #ethics #work #futureofwork #data

The robot vacuum cleaners are undergoing a renaissance this year. At the IFA 2023 tech trade show in Berlin this week, robot vacuums were literally roaming the halls. Never underestimate how much human labor is needed to make these robots seem "autonomous"…https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/1/23854843/robot-vacuum-ecovacs-dreametech-innovation-ifa-2023 (In our recent #DiPLab report on Microwork in Brazil, we interviewed several microworkers who took pictures to train the robots' "smart" cameras, for an average hourly wage of $1.80.https://diplab.eu/who-trains-the-data-for-artificial-intelligence-in-brazil-a-joint-report-diplab-latraps-on-micro-work-june-2023/)

Ce matin sur @franceculture, Clément Le Ludec parle pendant 3 minutes exactes de notre enquête #DiPLab HUSH. Avec l’aide de l’ANR, nous sommes allés interviewer microtravailleurs et entrepreneurs en plusieurs pays d’Afrique, et notamment à Madagascar.
https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/open-source/a-madagascar-les-travailleurs-precaires-de-l-ia-francaise-8695705

What is the "truth" of an algorithm? We will discuss this with Florian Jaton, author of 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙩𝙪𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙛 𝘼𝙡𝙜𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙝𝙢𝙨 (@mitpress, 2021) at our next #DiPLab hybrid seminar, on Wed 29 March, 3:30pm CET, both online and at @TelecomParis. Click here to register https://diplab.eu/florian-jaton-is-a-guest-of-our-monthly-diplab-seminar-wed-29-march-2023-330-pm-cet/ #seminar #algorithms #groudtruth #database

Do you use a voice assistant? Do you like to add filters to your pictures? To make them, tech companies buy selfies and audio recordings from underpaid microworkers from poor countries like Venezuela or the Philippines. @algorithmwatch interviews #diplab researcher @ptubaro about the market for personal data that fuels AI. https://algorithmwatch.org/en/people-behind-machine-learning-models/