Outsourcing Artificial Intelligence: Responding to the Reassertion of the Human Element into Automation

Abstract

Science fiction imaginaries and Silicon Valley innovators have long envisioned a workerless future. However, this industrial ambition has often outpaced technological realities in robotics and artificial intelligence, leading to a reassertion of human skills to cover untenable gaps in autonomous systems. This one-day workshop will invite discussion on this recent retrograde trend toward precarious (and often concealed) human labour across such domains as agriculture, transportation, and caregiving through paper presentations and design activities. Throughout, we will ask how this phenomenon speaks to engineering and design challenges and, subsequently, encourage participants to ideate new cybernetic arrangements that centre the agency and well-being of essential workers.