Ghost work

Ghost Work was a term coined by anthropologist Mary L. Gray and computer scientist Siddharth Suri in their 2019 book, Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass.

Definition

“Ghost Work" does not describe the work itself, but the conditions of work. It focuses on work that is task-based and content-driven that can be funneled through the internet and APIs, Application programming interfaces. This kind of work can include labeling, editing, moderating, and sorting information or content. For example, whenever Youtube's algorithm or AI recommends a video to a user, it's due to the work that someone did to program it."

An example of this type of work and where it began, comes from Amazon (company). As the retailer grew, they realized that they would need to constantly post products, verify product photos, create product captions, and more. In addition to these tasks, Amazon also needed an army of people to fix up book reviews back in 2005, so they created a website, MTurk, where tasks could be posted for others to complete. Once these tasks were completed, the person who completed it would be paid. Amazon also charged a small surcharge to match posters with those who had certain qualifications to complete the projects and tasks. This allowed almost anyone to go on and find work.

"Ghost Work" is also work that can be done remotely (wherever they have internet access) and on a contract-basis. It's an invisible workforce made up of those who treat it as a full time job and those who pick it up whenever they have the time. Though it can work position-independent through the internet, there are data factories in China that mine “the Saudi Arabia of data” by parsing and cataloguing to make data useful and then assemble the foundation of the nation’s AI ambition. The core characteristics of low-wage, disposable, boring and no growth of the ghost work retained. The ghost workers are the low-tech part of the high-tech production, as the construction workers in the digital world. The fear of one day AI will take their jobs is more obvious.

One of the benefits of "Ghost Work" is that it can allow for flexible hours due to the worker choosing when they complete a task. This can make it appealing for many who may not be able to find work elsewhere due to many different circumstances.

With the promise of flexible hours and endless tasks, companies can potentially undervalue, under appreciate or under compensate workers. However the workforce today is beginning to turn more towards this way of work, similar to Uber and Lyft drivers, rather than the standard 9-5 style of work .

In contrast to peer production that emphasizes the community spirit and co-work on open source products, the ghost works tend to be benefit-driven.

"Ghost Work" is different from the gig work or Temporary work because temporary and gig work are considered more full time and project based, rather than task based. While the gig work includes more general platform work, the ghost work emphasizes on software or algorithm aspect of assisting the machine to automate further. Through labelling the content, the ghost workers teach the machine to learn as defined by Gari and Suri “human labor powering many mobile phone apps, websites, and artificial intelligence systems.”

Authors

Mary L. Gray was a Fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, while also being a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research. In addition to Harvard, Gray is also part of the faculty at Indiana University in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering.

Siddharth Suri was a computational social scientist focused on studying crowdsourcing, behavioral economics and the intersection of computer science. In 2007, Suri completed his Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania.