On December 18, a conference entitled “Accountability in AI Global Value Chains: Data, Labour, and Environment” will be held under the scientific direction of Antonio Casilli, co-founder of DiPLab; Baptiste Delmas, private law researcher and member of Intérêt à agir; Judith Rochfeld, professor of private law; and Luca D’Ambrosio, lawyer and researcher and member of Intérêt à agir. The social, environmental and human costs of AI are already immense. From the working conditions of data workers to the energy and water demands of AI systems, the local impacts of data centers and mines, and the protection of personal data and copyright, these costs raise fundamental questions about responsibility. Who is accountable for these impacts, and how should responsibility be shared across global AI value chains? Can we build AI that is genuinely responsible, ethical and sustainable? To address these questions, the conference will bring together researchers and experts from a range of disciplines. The announced speakers include Benjamin Selwyn, Jason Nemerovski, Mercy Mutemi, Anne-Laure Ligozat, Aurora Gómez Delgado, Nicolas Pinaud The day will be held at french Senat 15 rue de Vaugirard, Paris 75006 from 9H00 to 17H30 You can register for free here

On Wednesday, October 21, Antonio Casilli, founder of DiPLab, was invited by François Picard to take part in a debate on France 24 English, in a programme entitled “AI on the Ballot? Voters in US Midterms Revolt Against Data Centres.” During the programme, Antonio reminded the audience that data centres, in addition to consuming vast amounts of energy, water and other resources, require very little human labour once they have been built. As a result, they generate few employment opportunities in the long term. A documentary excerpt also showed how the constant low-frequency humming noise produced by the cooling fans of data centre servers can negatively affect the health and quality of life of neighbouring residents, while also driving down property values. Antonio also pointed out that, until recently, data centres were predominantly located in the Global North, with around 40% of them in the United States. However, they are increasingly being established in the Global South, where land is cheaper, regulations are often less stringent, and water, energy and other resources can be extracted more easily. Later in the debate, Antonio challenged the idea that tech titans could be considered philanthropists. He analysed their recent outbursts of charity, such as Elon Musk’s proposal to give every child in the United States a share of SpaceX, arguing that such gestures could be understood as attempts to appease public anger and pre-empt calls for the nationalisation of their companies.

Today, one of the leading organizations on data protection in the EU, None of your business (noyb), filed 5 complaints against Scale AI in 4 different countries of the European Union.  Our report, “ Surveillance at Scale : how AI training Platforms gather personal data from European Workers”, co-authored with our partners at Reversing.works, served as the basis for these complaints, representing 5 EU citizens who worked for Scale to train some of the leading AI models from the US.  Among Scale’s current and former clients are Meta, OpenAI, Apple and XAI, who relied on over 900 000 workers worldwide that Scale claims to have organized through Outlier, one of its “AI tutoring” platforms, which also operates in the EU. The AI WORLd project observed that Outlier was conducting abusive practices of its workers : surveillance and data collection through at least 16 third-party trackers (including Facebook, Linkedin, screen recorder Fullstory, and data aggregator Sprig) and invasive biometric verification procedures. When the workers sent their data subject access requests to Outlier, they were met with silence. As a consequence of these privacy violations, Noyb filed complaints on behalf of 5 data workers with the Data Protection Authorities of France, Italy, Netherlands, and Austria on October 27th,asking them to investigate the data collection and processing practices of Scale AI. > Lisa Steinfeld Leiser, Data Protection Lawyer at noyb comments: “Such constant > and extensive tracking while working really goes against all reasonable > expectations. Why should LinkedIn or Facebook know which tasks you’re working > on?” While workers were affected by invasive surveillance practices, they would also be tasked with reviewing and annotating EU citizen’s personal data who would, for example, engage in a conversation with a Meta AI model. > Antonio Casilli, DIPLab founder, explains : “This research reveals the > extraction of personal data for purposes ranging from covert AI training to > potential military applications. These practices raise serious concerns about > social justice, labor law, and European data security. We urge authorities to > recognize and halt harmful data-extractive practices by US companies.” The production process of generative AI models reveals how Big Tech employs mass data collection practices : this is why we also believe these complaints reveal how important it is to uphold the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is at risk of being drastically weakened in the coming months with the Digital Omnibus law, which is being negotiated in the EU parliament right now. The proposed changes will, among others, set out a legitimate interest to use personal data for AI training purposes, authorize the retention of sensitive data in a number of cases, and greatly limit the right to access that a data subject can exercise – among many other dramatic changes. The Digital Omnibus will carry dire consequences for EU citizens’ privacy and the EU economy. As we set out to demonstrate in our report, the AI industry depends on personal data and labor extracted from the rest of the world in order to train its models. The EU has become a periphery for this purpose : under its current form, the Digital Omnibus will accelerate this dispossession process, where EU citizens train the models that prey on their expertise and personal data. > Thomas Le Bonniec, DIPLab PhD candidate adds : ” US companies (Meta, OpenAI, > xAI…) rely on Scale AI’s platforms to exploit a precarious and educated > European workforce to train these models while stealing their data. As Scale > engages with the US department of Defense to train military-grade AI systems, > this risks worsening an already existing security crisis and backfires on the > Digital Omnibus deregulation package goals, i.e. competitivity, innovation, > and digital sovereignty.” Please feel free to reach out to media@noyb.eufor further inquiries on the complaints, and to us at contact@diplab.eufor more on the report.  This partnership is part of a strategic litigation push to defend privacy and data protection in the European Union with partners Reversing.works and Intérêt À Agir, which was awarded funding by the Digital Freedom Fund and the European AI & Society Fund.

On Saturday, 17 October, the conference Hacker la Tech, organised by the French investigative media outlet Mediapart, took place in Paris. Bringing together professionals, researchers, writers, journalists, and activists, the event offered a space to discuss technology from a range of critical perspectives. One of the panels, introduced by Antonio Casilli and Dan Israel, a journalist at Mediapart, invited Caroline Wambui, trade unionist and co-founder of the Data Labelers Association, and Germán Salazar, a member of Corporación Ngen. The Data Labelers Association is a trade union founded by Kenyan data workers, advocating for the fair treatment and recognition of data labelers. They recently formally notified Teleperformance, along with Intérêt à Agir, The Oversight Lab Africa, and DiPLab, over its inaction in protecting workers’ integrity. Corporación Ngen is a Chilean collective founded by residents of Quilicura, a neighbourhood of Santiago where tech companies, notably Google, have settled their data centres because of the wetlands surrounding the city. These wetlands are currently threatened by data centres that use water to cool their servers. The discussion brought into focus two of the most important concerns surrounding the development of artificial intelligence: AI water consumption and environmental destruction, and the labour exploitation it produces. By bringing together perspectives from Latin America and Africa, the speakers highlighted the connections between struggles that are often perceived as separate and explored the “double cost of AI”. Whether these struggles concern the environmental consequences of data-centre infrastructure or the working conditions of those who produce the data, these movements confront different dimensions of the same technological model. The conversation revolved around the need to build collective forms of resistance, initially at the local level but, in the longer run, through collective action that can transcend geographical boundaries as AI issus are themeselves, globalized. Rather than treating environmental protection and workers’ rights as distinct causes, the conversation invited participants to consider how these struggles might converge in challenging the social and ecological costs of AI. Watch the video in french bellow

On October 16, Bloomberg published an article about highly paid experts entering the data work industry. Until recently, data work platforms were known for offering low wages and requiring little formal qualification. However, we have recently seen data work companies offering much higher rates, sometimes reaching $400 an hour for professionals in specialised fields such as radiography, software engineering, and civil rights law. Antonio Casilli, co-founder of DiPLab, explains that these so-called “expert” data annotators are, in fact, only assigned a very small portion of the tasks available on these platforms. DiPLab’s recent report, Surveillance at Scale, already addresses this issue, showing how these experts are given only a limited number of tasks before being sidelined by the platform. Advertising recruitment campaigns targeting highly qualified professionals could benefit AI companies by creating the impression among the general public that their products are trained by PhD-level experts, while the vast majority of the work continues to be performed by precarious, underpaid workers. Mercor, one of these companies, claims to pay its workers an average of $110 an hour. Prolific, meanwhile, claims that 30% of its workforce consists of experts. Both companies have declined to provide further details to substantiate these claims. Read the article here (subscription based) Illustration: By Planetary AI and Techworker Community Africa DOI: https://doi.org/10.7488/era/7341 ©2026 Njung’e Wanjiru, Mohammad Amir Anwar, Beatrice Bonami, Srravya Chandhiramowuli, Richard Mathenge, and Mophat Okinyi. All rights reserved. Illustrator: Njung’e Wanjiru

Utopia and Work: When Alternatives Become Possible, a collective volume edited by Mariagrazia Cairo Crocco, Enrico Donaggio, and Nadine Richez-Battesti, was published by Theseo on September 30. In his chapter, “Utopies concrètes et utopies nécessaires à l’heure des intelligences artificielles” (“Concrete utopias and necessary utopias in the age of artificial intelligence”), Antonio Casilli develops four possible utopias for data work, drawing on forms of resistance and agentivity already emerging among workers. Despite the harsh working conditions faced by data workers, the intense surveillance to which they are subjected, and the strict prescription of their work through algorithmic management, data workers engage in both individual and collective forms of resistance to platforms. Workers are resorting to different means of resistance to resist platform exploitation. These include strikes by drivers and delivery workers across Europe, the United States, and Asia, as well as legal action initiated by data workers in Eastern Africa. Through these different forms of action, workers have secured new rights and protections, including the reclassification of employment contract, access to social protections in cases of illness or work related accidents, or even minimal hours payment. Resistance can also be found in free labour done by platform and social medias users with boycott, consumers strikes and consumers unions. As platform workers and users increasingly repurpose platform architectures as tools of resistance, a key question emerges: How do workers invent new forms of autonomy and resistance beyond the constraints imposed by platform capitalism? This chapter builds on one decade of research conducted by Antonio Casilli and DiPLab on data work across the world. It proposes four concrete utopias, possibilities for alternative futures grounded in existing practices of resistance and collective struggle, complemented by two necessary utopias to counterbalance the limitations of the first four. These four concrete utopias are: (1) unionization, whether through data workers joining existing trade unions or creating their own; (2) platform cooperativism and the development of international alternative networks platforms; (3) legislative regulation and the adoption of rules governing platform work; and (4) accountability on the part of technology companies and platforms, through partnerships with their clients and regulatory bodies. The first of the two necessaries utopia is a Social digital income : aka the collective distribution of the money created trough users activities on platforms. The goal is to recognize the free labour users are providing to platforms by using them and also to ensure data workers are remunerated correctly The second is the re-territorialization of digital labour, which involves the collective reappropriation and local governance of digital platforms and infrastructures, with the aim of strengthening workers’ digital sovereignty and their control over the technologies that shape their working conditions. You can download the book for free here

In a recent article, entitled “Séances de psy, crises ésotériques, jurons… Les étranges expériences d’Anthropic sur la «conscience de l’IA» ” Elise Vianacourt asks Antonio Casilli what he thinks about the potential emergence of conscious AI. The article discusses whether AI could be conscious or not, and, if so, whether we should care about its well-being. This is already actually the case at Anthropic, which has hired a team to “take care” of its model. In his interview, Antonio Casilli reminds us that behind AI ethics research are the very same companies that produce AI themselves. This allows them to direct research in the direction they want, avoiding the issue of human work and the working conditions behind AI. “A major part of the research on artificial intelligence is financed by the big companies in the sector themselves, and that’s a problem. To put it another way, it gives them a way to choose their own research topics and create a fake opposition.“ Casilli also argues that this could be a way for tech companies to avoid any legal repercussions for violations of the law that their models could commit. Nothing more than a “tactical and marketing” move. “Imagine a scenario where, twenty years from now, we consider AI not as a galaxy of products, but as sentient beings with rights. Picture what it could look like in a court of law. Confronted with illegal behavior by its machines, Anthropic could argue that the company isn’t responsible. Even worse, it could say: “If you punish us, you are putting the well-being of this creation at risk, and you are violating its rights.” “ You can read the article here

On September 29th, Antonio Casilli was invited to the podcast Les Temps Électriques by Sophie Sontag-Koenig, alongside Arnaud Casado, a legal researcher and member of the Sorbonne’s Judicial Institute, who specializes in labour law. In this episode, entitled “Algorithms at Work! Sociological Investigations and Legal Mobilizations,” the two researchers question the transformations of labour caused by AI, the importance of CSEs (Social and Economic Committees), data workers’ rights, and the environmental toll of AI. Casilli’s interview opens with the “invisible work” carried out by data workers, far removed from the smooth image of the data scientists and engineers we imagine behind AI. He describes this vast category of workers who “teach” AI, label data, and moderate content, more often than not in countries of the Global South. He explains how tangible their work actually is and adds: “This work is far from invisible as soon as we start looking for the workers behind it.” Arnaud Casado considers the possibility of fighting against AI through the law, and especially through the relationship of subordination between workers and companies. One possibility could be the Duty of Vigilance Law. Recently, Teleperformance was formally notified to undertake a comprehensive review of its vigilance plan, by the Kenyan workers’ association Oversight Lab Africa and the Data Labellers Association. Casilli reminds us that Kenyan workers face very low wages, are denied labour rights such as maternity leave, and are often relocated by Teleperformance itself, which hires them from other African countries, leading to visa blackmailing, and illegal employment. This is the first time the Duty of Vigilance Law has been mobilized in this way. Later in the interview, Casilli links data workers and the environment by pointing out that data worker hubs and AI extractivist infrastructures, such as lithium mines and data centers whose voracious water consumption is endangering local communities, can often be found in the same places, mainly in the Global South. He then discusses the Chilean situation, where he is currently conducting research, and the case of activists from the Atacama Desert who are currently fighting against the development of data centers in the oasis they have inhabited for generations. He describes these areas in the Global South as “sacrificial areas”, where “human resources are sacrificed as much as environmental resources.” Casilli closes the podcast by reminding us to question the technologies that make our lives easier at work, or that are presented as “more ethical”. For example, Zoom is often presented as an alternative to in-person meetings, which are considered more polluting. Yet Zoom itself involves AI and therefore relies on the invisible, poorly paid work of thousands of workers across the globe, as well as on data centers and other polluting technologies. You can listen to the podast here

Antonio Casilli’s new chapter for the edited volume Digital Labour in a Turbulent Era, edited by Paola Tubaro, has been pre-published. The book will be published in November of this year. Entitled “The Making of the Data Working Class,” the chapter marks a “turning point” for its author: public awareness of data workers is growing rapidly, and they are starting to fight back and resist. Casilli starts the chapter by describing two categories of workers supporting AI production. The first one consists of tech workers, such as data scientists, data analysts, and software engineers, who are also described as the “AI middle class.” They are highly educated and enjoy a relatively privileged position in the social hierarchy. In contrast, a vast pool of precarious workers operates in the shadows. These “digital blue-collar workers,” who train models, label data, and moderate platform content, are not only rendered invisible but also silenced by corporate non-disclosure clauses. Their position is further shaped by the fact that many of them are located in the Global South. Corrected version He identifies three distinct processes that prefigure the development of a collective class identity: First, the proliferation of academic concepts used to define data work and data workers. Second, the process through which data workers and civil society have adopted, adapted, and reappropriated these definitions. And finally, the historical perspective in which these two processes are embedded, and the ways in which this new labour class has been politically conceptualized over the past decades. He argues that the shifting concepts used by scholars and the proliferation of names adopted by workers themselves are both signs of an ongoing process of class identity formation. Read the chapter here Casilli, Antonio A. (2026), ‘The Making of the Data Working Class’, in P. Tubaro (ed.) Digital Labour in a Turbulent Era, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, at HAL science

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.