A Bottom-Up End-User Intelligent Assistant Approach to Empower Gig Workers against AI Inequality
This addresses inequality for gig workers, but it is a position paper outlining challenges and opportunities rather than presenting results.
The paper tackles AI inequality in gig work, proposing a bottom-up approach using end-user-programmable intelligent assistants to empower workers by providing AI-enabled planning support and data sharing, aiming to bridge divides in technology access and data ownership.
The growing inequality in gig work between workers and platforms has become a critical social issue as gig work plays an increasingly prominent role in the future of work. The AI inequality is caused by (1) the technology divide in who has access to AI technologies in gig work; and (2) the data divide in who owns the data in gig work leads to unfair working conditions, growing pay gap, neglect of workers' diverse preferences, and workers' lack of trust in the platforms. In this position paper, we argue that a bottom-up approach that empowers individual workers to access AI-enabled work planning support and share data among a group of workers through a network of end-user-programmable intelligent assistants is a practical way to bridge AI inequality in gig work under the current paradigm of privately owned platforms. This position paper articulates a set of research challenges, potential approaches, and community engagement opportunities, seeking to start a dialogue on this important research topic in the interdisciplinary CHIWORK community.