Your Boss Is an Algorithm: Artificial Intelligence, Platform Work and Labour

What effect do robots, algorithms, and online platforms have on the world of work? Using case studies and examples from across the EU, the UK, and the US, this book provides a compass to navigate this technological transformation as well as the regulatory options available, and proposes a new map for the era of radical digital advancements.

From platform work to the gig-economy and the impact of artificial intelligence, algorithmic management, and digital surveillance on workplaces, technology has overwhelming consequences for everyone's lives, reshaping the labour market and straining social institutions. Contrary to preliminary analyses forecasting the threat of human work obsolescence, the book demonstrates that digital tools are more likely to replace managerial roles and intensify organisational processes in workplaces, rather than opening the way for mass job displacement.

Can flexibility and protection be reconciled so that legal frameworks uphold innovation? How can we address the pervasive power of AI-enabled monitoring? How likely is it that the gig-economy model will emerge as a new organisational paradigm across sectors? And what can social partners and political players do to adopt effective regulation?

Technology is never neutral. It can and must be governed, to ensure that progress favours the many. Digital transformation can be an essential ally, from the warehouse to the office, but it must be tested in terms of social and political sustainability, not only through the lenses of economic convenience. Your Boss Is an Algorithm offers a guide to explore these new scenarios, their promises, and perils.

Author: Antonio Aloisi, Valerio de Stefano
Publisher: Hart Publishing
Published: 07/14/2022
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.01lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9781509953172

About the Author
Aloisi, Antonio: -

Antonio Aloisi is Assistant Professor of Labour Law at IE Law School, IE University, Madrid, Spain. He is also a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow, having been awarded a Horizon 2020 research grant by the European Commission for his "Boss Ex Machina" project about algorithmic management (https: //bossexmachina.ie.edu/). He was a postdoctoral fellow at the European University Institute (EUI), Florence.

Antonio holds a doctorate in business and social law (2018) from Bocconi University, Milan, where he also taught at the School of Law. He has published numerous articles about labour regulation and technology and platform work in top international law journals, and was a consultant for several international institutions.Stefano, Valerio de: - "

Valerio De Stefano is the BOF-ZAP Professor of Labour Law at the Institute for Labour Law of the University of Leuven, Belgium. His research focuses on Artificial Intelligence, People Analytics and the workplace and platform-based work in the gig-economy. He holds a PhD in Law of Business and Commerce from Bocconi University, Milan (2011). From 2014 to 2017, he was an officer of the International Labour Organization.

Valerio recently edited a special issue on AI at work for the Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal. He is the principal investigator of several major grants about labour and technology, including from the FWO - Research Foundation Flanders and Horizon2020. In 2020, Valerio was awarded the Service to Society Prize by KU Leuven for his public engagement based on his research. He has been a consultant for the ILO, several EU institutions, and national governments. He is the co-editor of the Dispatches section of the Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal and a member of the OECD Network of Experts on AI (ONE AI)."