Cyborg Workers: The Past, Present, and Future of Automated Labour

From lecture halls to editorial offices and headquarters of tech companies in Silicon Valley, observers argue that thanks to unprecedented advances in AI technology, we are headed to a future in which less and less human labour is required to produce what will sustain an increasingly work-less society. This future is either depicted as a carefree utopia in which human creativity is finally liberated from the burden of work or as a dystopian nightmare in which a growing number of workers compete for a decreasing number of jobs. Our interdisciplinary conference aims to challenge these narratives by bringing together historical perspectives with those of the social sciences in an effort to better understand the legacy and future of machine-driven and automated labour.