Waiting for Robots

Reviews / Votes

"Casilli's incisive analysis of the hidden human costs of AI, combined with his clear and engaging prose, establishes the book as essential reading for those seeking to understand the ethical and social dimensions of technology. By dismantling the conventional wisdom surrounding AI and exposing the labor that underpins it, Casilli offers a compelling framework for envisioning a more equitable and inclusive digital future." -- Dov Greenbaum and Mark Gerstein * Science * "Rather than replacing jobs, new technologies are changing them in fundamental ways. Secure, long-term, financially rewarding, and often meaningful work is being replaced by work that is precarious, short-term, underpaid or unpaid, and 'taskified' into small segments whose end purpose the worker may not even know. . . . Waiting for Robots was first published in France in 2019. . . . The updating is quite thorough. The impact of tools like ChatGPT-which didn't exist when the French edition was published-is addressed throughout, and there's an abundance of post-2019 sources in the footnotes for further study. The translation by Brown preserves the force of Casilli's polemical style." -- Joseph Cothrel * Newcity * "US founding father Thomas Jefferson used dumbwaiters-small lifts that carry meals-during his extravagant dinners. There seemed to be no human intervention, but the lifts were operated by enslaved basement staff. As sociologist Casilli acutely observes, today too, artificial-intelligence systems are made to seem automated, often by overlooked and underpaid workers. His thought-provoking survey of robots highlights 'the presence of inconspicuous labour in AI solutions,' hence its blunt subtitle, the Hired Hands of Automation." -- Andrew Robinson * Nature * "The powerful point [Waiting for Robots] makes is the complete dependence of AI and digital technologies generally on ongoing human input. . . . The book makes a compelling case that robots and humans are interdependent and will remain so. Generative AI will continue to need human-produced material ('data') and intervention to avert model collapse. Humans are also going to have to pay for digital services so will need to have money to pay with. Focusing on the economic dynamics involved is crucial, as it is clear that the market/platform/ecosystem structures are currently tilted towards the (owners of) robots and away from humans. . . . There is a lot of food for thought in Waiting for Robots." -- Diane Coyle * The Enlightened Economist * "Casilli argues that despite claims to the contrary, human input remains a crucial component of all modern automation and artificial-intelligence tools, regardless of their sophistication. The difference is that instead of this role being obvious . . . it's now hidden, and usually on purpose. . . . Casilli gives readers plenty of examples of how human labor (much of it coming from Asian, Latin American, and African countries) props up-or, in some cases, pretends to actually be-intelligent systems and products. . . . Robots, automation, and various intelligent systems have been just on the verge of taking over all aspects of our work lives and cultural output for decades now. In the end, artificial intelligence is a technological process that isn't actually artificial, he says. Peer behind the curtains of smooth and seamless efficiency, and it's humans all the way down." -- Bryan Gardiner * MIT Technology Review * "Casilli debunks the AI myth and points to the data factories in Africa, Latin America and China. It's the human robots that produce intelligence, he argues. Not just algorithms." -- Matthaios Tsimitakis * Creatives Unite * "In this feisty manifesto, Casilli accuses the tech industry of using automation to exploit a growing digital workforce. . . . Casilli's sobering perspective makes clear that the dangers posed by AI are more mundane, if no less insidious, than commonly imagined, and the recommendation to implement a 'universal digital income'-in which profits reaped by tech companies from monetizing user data are taxed and redistributed to the public-is bold and original. A troubling snapshot of the future of work, this unnerves." * Publishers Weekly * "Disturbing. . . . Artificial intelligence, according to its advocates, holds out the promise of an end to mind-numbing, exploitative work. Casilli . . . vehemently disagrees. He argues that it has merely changed the type of labor and the structure of the exploitation, and he has a mountain of research to support his case. . . . Casilli has identified a host of problems in the brave new world of AI, and perhaps this book can be a good place to start thinking about solutions. Revealing the dirty secrets of the AI revolution-and offering ideas for a path forward." * Kirkus Reviews * "This recommended philosophical exploration of the current human labor cost of AI deepens the conversation around the promise and future of this type of technology." * Library Journal * "Hidden labour and exploitation of human workers involved in the production and facilitation of automation." * The Bookseller * "One of the sharpest critics of AI is sociologist Casilli. . . . Casilli argues that we should focus on digital labor, specifically the work that goes into AI training and data labeling, which illustrates that human workers are actually being replaced by other humans." * Jacobin * "Casilli is a prominent sociologist and social/digital ethnographer known for his work on digital labor, social media, and the impact of digital innovation (and artificial intelligence) on society. . . . In Waiting for Robots, Casilli focuses on increasing innovation in digital labor and automation operating within various economic structures, including popular digital social media, search, commercial, and 'gig economy' platforms. Casilli addresses exploitation of digital labor through restructuring relationships between employers and employees in the digital economy, leading to increasing exploitation margins over time. Casilli recognizes current struggles to improve working conditions of digital labor and political pushbacks against such struggles. The text concludes with a discussion of potential policy decisions that could restore the original promise of digitization to foster open-source (social property rights), reduce exploitation (if not eliminate it), and reduce inequality. Recommended." * Choice * "We hear daily that machines are learning, adapting, and replacing human intervention across the supply chain-from predictive maintenance to intelligent inspection and beyond. But Waiting for Robots (a title that knowingly echoes Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot) by Casilli offers a critical counterpoint that deserves attention from anyone working in automation or industrial systems. Like Beckett's elusive Godot, the fully autonomous future we're promised never quite arrives-and meanwhile, humans keep doing the work. . . . Casilli's analysis hits close to home for industries embracing digital transformation. . . . This is a provocative, well-researched, and timely read for engineers, executives, and system designers. In the age of smart machines, the most powerful force in automation may still be human labor-only now it's harder to see. And just like Godot, the robots we're waiting for might never come-at least not without us working quietly behind the curtain, keeping the show running." * Power Transmission Engineering * "Waiting for Robots, sweeping in its scope but exacting in its analysis, addresses the myriad, often hidden and unexpected ways AI is reconfiguring the nature of work, jobs, and labor worldwide. Written with verve and grace, Casilli's account stands out as one of the most perceptive and critical accounts of AI that has come out in recent times." -- Gabriella Coleman, Harvard University, author of "Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous" "Casilli's pioneering book, now updated and available for the first time in English, completely upends the celebratory myths about AI. Through a quite remarkable range of international fieldwork, Casilli shows how exploited human workers, usually in the Global South, not only train AI, but often literally do the exhausting work branded as 'artificial' intelligence. A devastating portrait of the realities of the capitalist platform economy." -- Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science, coauthor of "Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back" "In this brilliant, important book, Casilli upends the standard Promethean narrative that AI is here to liberate humankind from dull, dirty, and dangerous work. He explores, instead, the opposite tendency: tech advances dependent on exploited and precarious labor. Grounded in the stories of delivery drivers, taskers, and microworkers condemned to piecework, and leavened by a sophisticated understanding of the political economy of automation, Waiting for Robots offers a compelling vision for a truly inclusive tech economy." -- Frank Pasquale, professor of law, Cornell University, author of "New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI" "In Waiting for Robots, Casilli offers a sweeping exploration of digital labor, analogous to Melville's meticulous chronicles of the whaling industry. Casilli takes readers on a provocative journey where human work is not disappearing but evolving in unexpected ways. With a blend of analysis and a subtly wry sense of humor, he debunks the myth of AI-driven job replacement, exposing how human labor is reconfigured and concealed within digital platforms. Bridging history, media, philosophy, and business, this page-turning work redefines our understanding of digital labor and underscores the enduring significance of human work. An indispensable guide for scholars and general readers alike." -- R. Trebor Scholz, New School, author of "Own This!: How Platform Cooperatives Help Workers Build a Democratic Internet" "This book arrives just in time: in a moment in which the collective has focused its greatest dreams, or deepest anxieties, depending on where you sit, on the imminent reordering of society under the regime of large language model-fueled natural language processing tools such as ChatGPT and other AI-based automation of all sorts. . . . As Casilli reminds us, the 'digit' of 'digital labor' refers to numbers, yes, but it also refers to the digits of the hand, leaving their fingerprints wherever they touch these technologies, as long as we know where, and how, to look." -- Sarah T. Roberts, University of California, Los Angeles, author of "Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media," from the foreword