Imagining AI in organized labor: Struggles over the value of cultural work

FAIN: DOC-299672-24

University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA 19104-6205)
Julia B Ticona (Project Director: October 2023 to present)
Caitlin Petre (Co Project Director: April 2024 to present)

A humanistic analysis and development of journal publications on the ways those working in creative industries engage with generative artificial intelligence technology and its potential impact on arts and culture. 

Through interviews, ethnographic observation, and discourse analysis, this collaborative project investigates how cultural workers - and the unions that represent them - conceptualize generative AI and how these conceptualizations in turn shape 1) labor demands and 2) cultural workers' understandings of their work and status relative to other occupational groups. The project's goals are to deepen scholarly and popular understanding of the social processes by which collective meaning is assigned to emerging workplace technologies, and to consider how these assigned meanings have implications for ongoing labor struggles and inter-occupational solidarity.