Ghost Work in Pandemic Times: A Talk by Mary L. Gray

This event was recorded live on Zoom on December 2, 2021.

In the recent book she co-authored, Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass, Mary L. Gray exposed the invisible human workforce that powers the web. The reliance on on-demand workers to help AI systems run, Gray argues, has only increased during the pandemic, further eroding full-time employment and benefits. Will the post-COVID society create new forms of ghost work, or can technical innovation assist and empower human labor, such as that of trusted health care workers? Gray—a 2020 MacArthur Fellow, a senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research, and a faculty associate at Harvard University—addresses these urgent questions.

Presented with the Center for the Study of Women in Society, the Ph.D. Program in Anthropology, the Feminist Press, the Graduate Center Library, the PublicsLab, the Center for the Humanities, and CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies.

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