The 9th edition of INDL (International Network on Digital Labour) was held in Geneva, at the International Labour Organization (ILO), from 9 to 11 September. Bringing together almost 120 presenters across 35 sessions, the conference provided three days of discussion and exchange around current research on data and platforms work. The ILO was a particularly fitting setting for the conference, having just adopted, in June 2026, the Convention on Decent Work in the Platform Economy (No. 193), the first international labour standard specifically dedicated to workers in the platform economy. Data labour was explored through a wide range of perspectives, across eight topics, including Gender and Digital Labour, New Frameworks for a “Human-Centric” AI Supply Chain, and The Role of Social Dialogue in Governing AI-Mediated Work. Some of these presentations were given by DipLab members. Paola Tubaro presented her article, Not all equal: A multidimensional vulnerability indicator for platform data workers, which explores data workers and their relationship to data work through the lens of vulnerability. She also closed the conference with an engaging roundtable, chaired by Uma Rani and joined by Timothy Newman and Alex Taylor. The discussion focused on Setting up an Interdisciplinary Research Agenda on AI Supply Chains. On the second day of the conference, Antonio Casilli presented his article Deep Labor: Beyond the Platform/BPO Divide in Data Work. The paper challenges the distinction between platform work and BPO work, proposing instead to examine both through the broader lens of data work, or “deep labor”. Mathilde Abel presented the paper Extracting Workers’ Cognition: An NLP Approach to AI Annotation Guidelines, co-written with Thomas Le Bonniec, who also presented One Arm of the Assembly Line of AI: EU Data Workers and Privacy Regulation. The first paper explores how AI annotation work requires workers to combine cognitive skills, such as interpreting and evaluating content, with the ability to adapt to specific client requirements. The second paper examines how EU data workers’ personal data is collected and exploited by AI companies, arguing that giving workers greater control over their own data could also strengthen data protection for the wider public. Other DipLab-associated members also presented their work. Matheus Viana Braz presented Psychosocial and Health-Related Risks in AI Value Chains: The Case of Latin American Data Workers, which explores burnout risks among Latin American data workers, highlighting how high work demands, income insecurity, algorithmic surveillance, and limited autonomy can contribute to psychological exhaustion and disengagement. He also presented another paper, Digital Autoethnography and the Affective Economy of Data Work in the Global South, in which he draws on nine months of personal experience working on microtask platforms to examine how data work affects workers’ mental health and emotional well-being. Lucas Santos presented an article entitled Regulating Platform Labour in Brazil: Precarity, Contestation, and Workers’ Agency, exploring the debate surrounding the regulation of platform-mediated work in Brazil. Myriam Raymond presented her article From Atomized Workers to Digital Solidarities: Everyday Resistance among Egyptian Data Workers, which examines how Egyptian data workers use Facebook groups to share information, support one another, and develop collective forms of resistance against precarious working conditions and platform control. One of the keynotes was delivered by Julian Posada, a DiPLab-associated researcher, under the title [Data Work and Territory: The Latin American Experience]. Drawing on his new book, Platform Extractivism, he examined the reality of data work in Latin America, with a particular focus on Venezuela. His keynote explored the political-economic factors that have shaped Venezuela’s position within global AI supply chains, highlighting how data work is deeply embedded in broader economic and territorial relations. But the conference was also marked by several important announcements. One of the most significant was the formal notification of Teleperformance regarding the protection of Kenyan data workers. On the final day of the conference, the first South Asian chapter of the International Network on Digital Labour (INDL) was also announced. The workshop will take place in Pondicherry from February 1 to 5, 2027. Finally, it was announced that the next edition of INDL, INDL-10, will take place in São Paulo.

Antonio Casilli was invited by François Picard on FRANCE 24 to debate Tariq Krim and Marion Carré about a potential AI doomsday. You’ll find the video bellow

On September 4, Antonio Casilli delivered the closing keynote at the Swiss Sociological Association Congress, which took place at the University of Fribourg and the Haute École de Travail Social de Fribourg, around the 2026 theme “Communities & Societies in Movement.” His keynote was titled “Qui produit l’intelligence artificielle ? La création d’une classe ouvrière des données” (“Who Produces Artificial Intelligence? The Emergence of a Data Working Class”). In his keynote, Casilli discussed the emergence of two social classes around data work. The first, which he describes as the “digital middle class,” consists of qualified data workers, such as data analysts, engineers, and machine learning researchers. The second category consists of a much larger, yet highly invisibilised, workforce of data workers. These workers perform tasks such as data annotation, content moderation, and rating or evaluating AI-generated responses. Many of these workers are concentrated in developing countries and occupy lower positions in the AI supply chain. Casilli argues that the apparent divide between these two groups is not as deep as it may seem. His central argument is that the supposed divide between qualified workers in the technology sector and supposedly unqualified data workers is more closely linked to differences in social and political positioning than to differences in skills or competencies. A second key argument concerns the consequences of this distinction for solidarity among workers across the AI supply chain. By framing some workers as “qualified” and others as “unqualified,” this division contributes to a broader separation between “digital middle class” in the Global North and data workers in the Global South. His keynote also highlighted the transnational conditions that could foster the emergence of global solidarity among workers across the AI data supply chain.

Antonio Casilli and Julian Posada were both invited by the independent media outlet Democracy Now! to discuss their research on the hidden human labor behind artificial intelligence. In the interview, they take a deep dive into the hidden AI data workforce; the men and women whose labor makes chatbots and large language models (LLMs) possible, and who are increasingly becoming the new factory workers of the digital economy. Drawing on their research in Kenya, Madagascar, and Venezuela, they explore the working conditions of these workers across global labor markets, highlighting the significant inequalities between countries and, most importantly, bringing workers’ own voices to the forefront as they fight for dignity, recognition, and better working conditions. To see Antonio Casilli click here And to see Julian Posada interview click here

Congratulation to Antonio Casilli for his nomination by the Villa Albertine, the French Institute for Culture and Education to represent DiPLab at SXSW. South by Southwest is a major culture and technology festival that will take place in Texas next March. Antonio Casilli will discuss AI, labor, and the environment, and this festival will also be an incredible way to amplify the voices of of activists workers and scholars, from all around the world. Unfortunately, voting has already been closed. Looking forward to hearing Antonio’s speech, “It Takes a Planet (and Millions of Workers) to Make AI,” should it be selected.

Abstract Il presente articolo propone una rilettura critica dello sviluppo dell'Intelligenza Artificiale attraverso alcune categorie analitiche elaborate da Romano Alquati (1935-2010), sociologo e intellettuale italiano tra i più originali del secondo Novecento. Alquati si autodefiniva «marxiano» — e non marxista — per distinguersi dai marxismi ortodossi e per indicare un rapporto diretto, critico e [...]

DiPLab’s Antonio A. Casilli was invited to speak on Pillole di Eta Beta, the technology programme broadcast on Italy’s RAI Radio 3, in an episode that opens with a striking new phenomenon: in Los Angeles, people are being paid to simply live their lives on camera. Wearing body-mounted cameras and sensor bracelets, workers film themselves doing household chores. Thousands of US workers have already been recruited for this work, paid a few dozen dollars for hours of first-person footage that becomes raw material for the next generation of autonomous machines. For Casilli, what is unfolding in Los Angeles is the latest iteration of a phenomenon that has involved millions of workers across Asia, Africa, and Latin America for over a decade: training algorithms, labeling images, moderating content. A digital proletariat that the technology industry systematically erases from its triumphant narrative. And yet without it, none of its products would function. The episode also raises a harder question about users. Niantic, the company behind Pokémon Go, recently sold 30 billion video sequences, captured from players navigating the real world through augmented reality, to a robotics delivery company. Millions of people filmed streets, parks, and shops without knowing their footage would end up training autonomous delivery systems.

DiPLab’s Antonio A. Casilli was invited to launch the brand new Cyber Revolution podcast as the guest of its very first episode. In conversation with Hugo Pompougnac, president of the association Espaces Marx, he discusses DiPLab’s research on data workers, their working conditions, their forms of organisation, and their emerging strategies of resistance. The conversation situates this new workforce within a longer history: that of working-class antagonism. Because however novel the algorithms, the platforms, and the micro-task interfaces may seem, the dynamics at play (exploitation, invisibilization, collective struggle) are ones the labor movement has always known.

On 9 April 2026, DiPLab co-founder Antonio A. Casilli spoke at the Dénumérisons ! symposium at the French Assemblée Nationale, at the invitation of MP Lisa Belluco. The question brought to the floor: behind the apparent “freedom” and “intelligence” of digital platforms lies a workforce whose rights are systematically violated. Click workers, data labelers, content moderators, and micro-task workers who keep AI systems running are exposed to violent content, subject to constant algorithmic evaluation, and denied basic labor protections. Any serious effort to regulate AI must begin by putting the human beings who build it back at the center, making their labor visible, their rights enforceable, and their dignity non-negotiable.

di Paperino. Monologo raccolto da Fabrizio Melodia (*). A seguire un percorso – molto serio – di letture. Prendetela come una «scor-data» per i 90 anni di Donald Duck.   Mi chiamo Paperino. Sono un lavoratore. Forse mi conoscete. Forse avete riso delle mie disavventure, delle mie esplosioni di rabbia, dei miei fallimenti continui. Forse pensate che io sia semplicemente