Workshop 2: Dr. Samantha Shorey, ‘Working Futures for AI in Organizations’

Dr. Samantha Shorey (University of Texas at Austin) presented her paper ‘Working Futures for AI in Organizations‘ at the second AEOLIAN workshop ‘Reimagining Industry / Academic / Cultural Heritage Partnerships in AI’ on Tuesday 26th October 2021.

Abstract: The promise (or the threat) that artificial intelligence will eliminate human labor is a recurring theme in narratives about innovation. Yet, every automated technology begets new types of work that are required for its success. Situated at the meeting of human and machine, these are jobs that the founding editor of Wired optimistically calls the “jobs that machines dream up.” Here, human collaboration and supervision increases, not decreases, in value. This supervision can come at a gruelling cost. Dystopian futures are already present in seemingly automated places: in the production facilities where human hands still assemble the iPhone and on the social media platforms where human eyes still moderate online content. When we look more closely at automated processes, we begin to see both the glimmering and the dark possibilities of technology work.

How cultural organizations will be transformed by AI isn’t predetermined by the intentions of designers or the anticipations of critics. Rather, technology will become meaningful through use. Implementation is replete with moments of intervention, as technologies are reinvented and resisted. The practices and perspectives of those who use and work alongside AI are an important but often unseen aspect of this technology – these insights are essential to our imaginings of its future.