Reconsidering Accountability in the Present and Future of Work

ABSTRACTThere is a growing effort within CSCW and related fields to understand the effects of artificial intelligence, algorithmic management, and other contemporary and near-future transformations of digitally-mediated work. This panel builds on this effort by asking three guiding questions: how should academics more fully account for the consequences of new transformations in the workplace, how should we engage with workers who are already accounting for the ways that these systems impact their labor conditions and experience of work, and how should we be made accountable to workers for the design interventions we propose or deploy. The panelists will discuss topics including the impact of AI technology on frontline and essential workers, the transformative effect of algorithmic management on organizational practices within and beyond platform work, and how demands and efforts to attain algorithmic transparency by platform/gig-workers both reveal power imbalances within the workplaces and point to avenues for worker advocacy. We will also draw on scholarship that analyzes the shifting labor conditions of CSCW to situate contemporary concerns within the field's disciplinary history. We aim to generate conversation about the ways that these forms of accountability have already been unfolding, identify shared themes and concerns across parallel topics, and identify future directions for researchers moving forward in this space.