Title: Societal Impacts of AI on Labor

General Examination - Varun Rao

Committee: Andrés Monroy-Hernández (advisor), Arvind Narayanan, Peter Henderson

General Exam Period: April 15 - May 17, 2024

Room and Timing: May 15, 3-5pm Sherrerd Hall 008

Zoom Link: https://princeton.zoom.us/j/97776899839 

Abstract:

AI systems are increasingly mediating interactions on digital labor marketplaces, reshaping the nature of work and impacting billions of lives through opaque decisions. In this talk, I will explore the societal impact of AI on labor through the lens of rideshare and social media job ads. In the case of rideshare^[1], through a unique mixed methods study design blending worker interviews with large scale LLM-assisted analysis of over 1 million driver comments on Reddit, we thickly characterize transparency-related harms, mitigation strategies, and worker needs. Motivated by our findings we propose an outline of the first rideshare transparency report. In the case of job ads on social media^[2], our analysis of the Facebook Ad Library reveals a new form of discrimination through the selective use of demographic-specific images in job ads, affecting applicant demographics and reinforced by the ad delivery algorithm. Taken together, my research shows that AI-mediated platforms substantially shape job access for many through opaque, centralized decision-making which restricts user agency. Policy solutions mandating greater transparency may help with the decentralization of some platform power.    

Slide Deck: Varun_Research_Overview

Reading List:

Summary Notes: Varun's Reading List Notes

Foundational Studies in CSCW, HCI and Social Computing:

1. Grudin, Jonathan. "Why CSCW applications fail: problems in the design and evaluation of organizational interfaces." CSCW 1988.
2. Horvitz, Eric. "Principles of mixed-initiative user interfaces." Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1999.
3. Ackerman, Mark S. "The intellectual challenge of CSCW: the gap between social requirements and technical feasibility." Human–Computer Interaction 15.2-3 (2000).
4. Wobbrock, Jacob O., and Julie A. Kientz. "Research contributions in human-computer interaction." Interactions (2016).

Labor, Gig Work and Policy:

5. Rosenblat, Alex, and Luke Stark. "Algorithmic labor and information asymmetries: A case study of Uber’s drivers." International journal of communication (2016).
6. Alkhatib, Ali, Michael S. Bernstein, and Margaret Levi. "Examining crowd work and gig work through the historical lens of piecework." Proceedings of the 2017 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems. 2017.
7. Webb, Michael. "The impact of artificial intelligence on the labor market." Available at SSRN 3482150 (2019).
8. Zhang, Angie, et al. "Algorithmic management reimagined for workers and by workers: Centering worker well-being in gig work." Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2022.
9. Dubal, Veena. "On algorithmic wage discrimination." Columbia Law Review (2023).

Social Media Advertising and Algorithmic Audits:

10. Sweeney, Latanya. "Discrimination in online ad delivery." Communications of the ACM (2013).
11. Ali, Muhammad, et al. "Discrimination through optimization: How Facebook's Ad delivery can lead to biased outcomes." Proceedings of the ACM on human-computer interaction CSCW (2019).

Textbooks:

12. Barocas, Solon, Moritz Hardt, and Arvind Narayanan. Fairness and machine learning: Limitations and opportunities. MIT Press, 2023.

Ch 2        When is automated decision making legitimate?

Ch 3        Classification

Ch 4        Relative notions of fairness

Ch 7        A broader view of discrimination

13. Kraut, Robert E., and Paul Resnick. Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design. MIT Press, 2012.

        Ch 4        Regulating Behavior in Online Communities

        Ch 6         Starting New Online Communities

14. Van den Hoven, Jeroen. The Cambridge handbook of information and computer ethics (2010)

Ch 4         The use of normative theories in computer ethics.