Your Boss Is an Algorithm: Artificial Intelligence, Platform Work and Labour

The book explores the impact of robots, algorithms, and online platforms on the world of work, providing a compass to navigate the technological transformation and proposing a new map for the era of radical digital advancements. It demonstrates that digital tools are more likely to replace managerial roles and intensify organisational processes, rather than opening the way for mass job displacement. It also addresses the pervasive power of AI-enabled monitoring, the gig-economy model, and the need for effective regulation.

Format: Hardback
Length: 240 pages
Publication date: 14 July 2022
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Robots, algorithms, and online platforms have had a significant impact on the world of work, reshaping the labour market and straining social institutions. This book provides a compass to navigate this technological transformation and the regulatory options available, proposing a new map for the era of radical digital advancements. From platform work to the gig-economy and the impact of artificial intelligence, algorithmic management, and digital surveillance on workplaces, technology has overwhelming consequences for everyone's lives. Contrary to preliminary analyses forecasting the threat of human work obsolescence, the book demonstrates that digital tools are more likely to replace managerial roles and intensify organisational processes in workplaces, rather than opening the way for mass job displacement. Can flexibility and protection be reconciled so that legal frameworks uphold innovation? How can we address the pervasive power of AI-enabled monitoring? How likely is it that the gig-economy model will emerge as a new organisational paradigm across sectors? And what can social partners and political players do to adopt effective regulation?

Technology is never neutral. It can and must be governed to ensure that progress favours the many. Digital transformation can be an essential ally, from the warehouse to the office, but it must be tested in terms of social and political sustainability, not only through the lenses of economic convenience. Your Boss Is an Algorithm offers a guide to explore these new scenarios, their promises, and perils.

Weight: 460g
Dimension: 163 x 242 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781509953172