Patchworking data work: Supply chains of AI data production in China

Abstract

Drawing from three years of ethnographic fieldwork, in this talk, Julie Chen will delve into the formation of dynamic supply chains of AI data production in China and explores its conceptual implications for understanding data work. Her focus is on three groups of data workers with different employment relations: home-based freelancers, office-based formal employees at top-tier data suppliers, and informal workers in workshop-style subcontractor firms.

Data workers are not unitary; nor are their technological practices and organizational forms. By analyzing the technological infrastructure, demographic and socio-economic characteristics, and work conditions of these three types of data workers, she will demonstrate the internal differences and hierarchy within the data labor force and discuss the driving forces behind its stratification which contribute to the emergence of multi-layered networks of data production. These supply chains are characterized by dynamic, contingent, and sometimes chaotic, relationships between data workers, organizations, and technology. She theorizes these dynamic and contingent expressions of supply chains in AI industry as patchworking data work. The notion of patchworking advances the analytic framework of data work to go beyond a platform-centric lens and foregrounds the roles played by informal organizations and workers in shaping supply chains of AI data production.

Short Bio

Julie Chen is Assistant Professor in the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology (ICCIT) and Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto, Canada. Her research focuses on the transformation of work and worker's subjectivity in relation to digital technology, capitalism, and globalization. She is the co-author of Media and Management (University of Minnesota Press, 2021) and Super-sticky WeChat and Chinese Society (Emerald, 2018). She is also the founding editor of Platforms & Society and co-editor of a forthcoming SAGE Handbook of Digital Labour. She co-authored a research report “Digital labour platforms and national employment policies in China: studying the case of food delivery platforms,” published by the International Labour Organization.