DiPLab associate, Julian Possada (Assistant Professor at Yale University) was recently interviewed by Seth Camillo and Caroline Risberg for the podcast The Internet is Crack. In his book, “Platform Extractivism: Data Work and the People Powering Artificial Intelligence“, forthcoming at the University of California Press in October 2026, he examines the often invisible labor that makes AI and digital platforms possible, focusing on the workers, data practices, and extractive processes that underpin today’s AI systems. In this one-hour-long podcast, Julian Possada discusses the hidden labour behind artificial intelligence, how platforms source work from workers in the Global South, what this type of work actually entails, and how it perpetuates colonial patterns. He draws a few examples from his books and discusses the reality of data workers in Venezuela, a country specifically targeted by data annotation platforms because of its widespread internet access and the inflation crisis that has been ongoing for several years. You can listen to the podcast on Youtube

Edemilson Paraná invites Paola Tubaro to participate in a special issue published in the journal Globalizations that critically interrogates the convergence of environmental sustainability and digitalization. Governments and multi-lateral institutions frame the “twin transition” as a strategy to foster economic growth and durable social prosperity at the same time. However, Paraná argues in his introductory article (co-authored with Rodrigo Santaella-Gonçalves), this agenda is shaped by market logics and geopolitical competition, in ways that ultimately contradict the social and ecological goals it supposedly supports. The special issue has been designed to offer a systemic political-economy perspective on this inconsistency, grounded in critical social sciences and heterodox economics. Overall, it shows how the structural drivers of digitalisation can constrain its green potential and identifies pathways for redirecting the transition towards socially equitable and ecologically sustainable transformations. Paola Tubaro’s article within the issues aims to reconcile two separate trends in the study of the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI), one focused on the natural and the other on the social surroundings that supply resources for its production and use. She introduces the concept of the ‘dual footprint’ as a heuristic device to capture the commonalities and interdependencies between them. For that, she uses two in-depth case studies, each illustrating international flows of raw materials (nature) and of labour services (society). Case studies are a preliminary illustration of a broader idea, that will need to be developed further: that the AI industry is a value chain that spans national boundaries and perpetuates inherited global inequalities. Specifically, she uses the case of Argentina as a provider to the United States and Madagascar as a provider to France, Japan and South Korea. It appears that the countries that drive AI development (here, the United States, France, Japan and South Korea) generate a massive demand for inputs and trigger social costs that, through the value chain, largely fall on more peripheral actors (here, Argentina and Madagascar). While Argentina and Madagascar differ under many respects, in both cases initial hopes of jobs and prosperity have failed to materialise as predominant outsourcing arrangements reinforce informality and precariousness without preventing environmental damage. Put differently, the arrangements in place distribute the costs and benefits of AI unequally, resulting in unsustainable practices and preventing the upward mobility of relatively more disadvantaged countries. The concept of the dual footprint is useful because it grasps how the environmental and social dimensions of the dual footprint emanate from similar underlying socio-economic processes and geographical trajectories. To freely access the article click here

It has been a particularly productive semester for DiPLab researchers and affiliates in terms of publishing articles and book chapters. Here are the complete citations (and open access links) of our recent contributions that compare data work in various countries. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Special issue of New Political Economy guest-edited by Uma Rani Amara and Nicolas Pons-Vignon on “Power relations in the digital economy” has been published as Volume 30, issue 3 of the journal. It includes our article on “Where does AI come from?”, a comparison of data work in Venezuela, Madagascar, and France. > Tubaro, Paola, Antonio A. Casilli, Maxime Cornet, Clément Le Ludec, and Juana > Torres Cierpe. 2025. “Where Does AI Come from? A Global Case Study across > Europe, Africa, and Latin America.” New Political Economy 30 (3): 359–72. > doi:10.1080/13563467.2025.2462137. (preprint access here: > https://inria.hal.science/hal-04933816v1) The Journal Globalizations has published a special issue on The Political Economy of Artificial Intelligence in Latin America. It features our article on AI labor in Brazil and Argentina. > Tubaro, Paola, Antonio A. Casilli, Mariana Fernández Massi, Julieta Longo, > Juana Torres Cierpe, and Matheus Viana Braz. 2025. “The Digital Labour of > Artificial Intelligence in Latin America: A Comparison of Argentina, Brazil, > and Venezuela.” Globalizations, February, 1–16. > doi:10.1080/14747731.2025.2465171. (preprint access here: > https://cnrs.hal.science/hal-04935984v1) The Handbook of Digital Labor, edited by Jack Linchuan Qiu, Shinjoung Yeo, and Richard Maxwell, has been released by Wiley Blackwell. This comprehensive work brings together leading voices on the transformations of labor in the digital age. Among its contributions, our chapter on global inequalities and AI, comparing Venezuela, France, Madagascar, and Brazil. > Casilli, Antonio A., Paola Tubaro, Maxime Cornet, Clément Le Ludec, Juana > Torres-Cierpe, et al. 2025. Global Inequalities in the Production of > Artificial Intelligence: A Four-Country Study on Data Work. In: Jack Linchuan > Qiu, Shinjoung Yeo, Richard Maxwell (eds.). The Handbook of Digital Labor, > Wiley Blackwell, pp.219-232, 2025, ISBN10: 9781119981800. (preprint access > here: https://hal.science/hal-04742532v2) The journal New Technology, Work and Employment has made available, as an online first, the new article by Juana Torres-Cierpe and Paola Tubaro about Venezuelan data workers. > Torres-Cierpe, Juana and Paola Tubaro. 2025. Uninvited Protagonists: The > Networked Agency of Venezuelan Platform Data Workers. New Technology, Work and > Employment. https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12340 (preprint access here: > https://hal.science/hal-05041068v1)

Our DiPLab seminar will welcome on July 03, 2025, at 3:30 PM CET, Professor Francisca Gutiérrez Crocco (Universidad Austral de Chile). The seminar will be held both in person and online, at ISC-PIF, 113 rue Nationale, 75013 Paris, France. To register, click on the button below and fill out the form. The seminar is free to attend and in-person. Register to seminar Patching Algorithmic Management in Digital Delivery Platforms > In this Seminar, I will develop the concept of patching to analyse how digital > platforms maintain algorithmic power in the face of worker disruption. Drawing > on a four-year qualitative study of food delivery services in Chile and > Argentina, I will shift the analytical focus from couriers to support staff—an > often overlooked group tasked with resolving algorithmic failures. I will > describe five key functions that support staff perform to sustain platform > control over couriers: detecting disruptions, prioritising threats, creating > and implementing solutions, and imitating algorithmic outputs. I will argue > that platform control over couriers relies not only on automated decisions but > also on discretionary, often concealed, human interventions. While support > staff play a pivotal role in stabilising systems, they themselves are > subjected to tight algorithmic surveillance and managerial control. These > findings provide a socio-technical account of algorithmic management that > challenges technological determinism, highlighting the labour embedded in > supposedly automated processes. Francisca Gutiérrez Crocco holds a PhD in Sociology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. She currently works as a professor at the Universidad Austral de Chile and as a researcher at the Millennium Nucleus for the Evolution of Work. She has led several research projects on labour transformations in Latin America, funded by grants from the Chilean Research and Development Agency and other international organisations such as the Internet Society Foundation. She has also worked as a consultant for trade unions, the Chilean government, the ILO and ECLAC, among other organisations. Her work has been published in leading labour journals such as the International Labour Review, Work, Employment and Society and Employee Relations.

On 16-17 May 2025, DiPLab’s Paola Tubaro was invited by the French Institute in Argentina to participate in its landmark event “Night of Ideas.” At world-famous Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, she spoke in panels that provocatively questioned the “new voluntary servitude” of platform work and asked whether “in AI we trust?” On 20 May, she gave a talk on “The Future of Work and AI” at the prestigious University of Buenos Aires. She presented some results of her research on digital labor and its role in AI production, developed in the framework of the DiPLab research program. No Caption No Caption No Caption No Caption