Conferencias magistrales > Rafael Grohmann

Rafael Grohmann, University of Toronto, Canada

Title: Pedagogies of Struggles: How Workers are Learning to Govern Platforms and AI

Abstract: Around the world, workers are trying to build collectivities while dealing with platforms and artificial intelligence (AI). Whether in cooperatives, unions, associations, and other collectives, workers are learning to govern these technologies through bargaining and/or technology development. This talk will emphasize the importance of understanding the pedagogies of struggles in the digital labor landscape, as aspects of class struggles. No one is born an organizer, and no one is born knowing all the risks and possibilities of AI. How do workers collectively learn the meanings of platforms and AI? The presentation argues for the need to understand platform/AI governance from below, led by workers, and build on the Latin American tradition of educommunication for a better understanding of AI/platform literacy. The talk will show how Hollywood writers, the Homeless Worker Movement in Brazil, tech co-ops in Argentina and delivery workers in co-ops and unions in Brazil are learning to govern platforms and AI, as prototypes of organizing, amidst challenges, failures and experiments.

Bio: Rafael Grohmann is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies (Critical Platform Studies) at the University of Toronto. He is leader of the DigiLabour initiative and principal investigator of Worker-Owned Intersectional Platforms (WOIP). Grohmann is a Faculty Fellow at the Queer and Trans Research Lab / Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies (University of Toronto). He is researcher of Fairwork and Platform Work Inclusion Living Lab (P-WILL) project. He is also co-lead of Creative Labour and Critical Futures (CLCF) project. Grohmann is one of the founding editors of Platforms & Society journal and an editorial board member of Big Data & Society and Communication, Culture and Critique journals.