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Sarah Fox

@perhaxis.bsky.social

Assistant Professor at CMU HCII | Director of https://techsolidaritylab.com/

12 Posts327 Follower113 Folgt
Sarah Fox@perhaxis.bsky.social · 2w ago

The Tech Solidarity Lab is on the move! This fall, I'm joining the University of Michigan School of Information as the John Derby Evans Associate Professor. I'm grateful to the students and colleagues at CMU for what we built together. The work continues, just a little deeper in the Rust Belt. 💙

Tim Newman@tnewmsblues.bsky.social · last mo.

Highly recommend this by @morganklauss.bsky.social @perhaxis.bsky.social @milamiceli.bsky.social et al re: AI data workers “caught within a regime of entrapment: interconnected mechanisms that make it difficult for workers to leave or improve positions” www.morgan-klaus.com/pdfs/pubs/Ka...

Abstract: The rapid expansion of the AI industry relies heavily on the production, verification, and maintenance of data, otherwise known as "data work". Companies outsource and offshore this work through global AI supply chains that operate under exploitative conditions. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Kenyan data workers across platforms and BPOs, this paper examines how such conditions take shape and persist. We argue that workers are caught within a regime of entrapment, a system of interconnected mechanisms that make it difficult for workers to leave or improve their positions. These mechanisms include the push to invest in the promise of ‘AI’ jobs, the use of precarious contracts to govern workers, the capture of regulatory institutions, and the exploitation of global labor arbitrage. Using complementary lenses of neoliberal governmentality, precarity, and supply chain capitalism, we analyze why labor mobilization in this sector remains uniquely constrained. We conclude by outlining an orientation for research and scholarly practice that can support workers’ organizing efforts and contest the structural conditions sustaining this regime.
Morgan Klaus Scheuerman@morganklauss.bsky.social · 4mo ago

- [Tuesday April 14 | 12:03-12:15 PM in Labor, Equity and the Hidden Economy] 'The plan is just survival': Data Work in Kenya and the Regime of Entrapment

Sarah Fox@perhaxis.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Congratulations to @jordant.bsky.social who just defended his dissertation! It examines how queer artists engage with generative AI through adaptation, resistance, and refusal, while also critiquing how underlying models encode narrow standards of "taste" that constrain aesthetic possibilities.

Sarah Fox@perhaxis.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Hot off the presses! In this new piece, we trace neoliberal automation in bus transit—"driverless" pushes that accelerate class decomposition and weaken collective bargaining, masked as innovation. These threaten wages and safety, yet workers are resisting and advancing more just alternatives.

Anthropology of Work Review@anthropologyofwork.bsky.social · 4mo ago

New article alert! "Transit workers offer instead visions of a labor future centered on dignity, safety, and democratic control over technological change" Check out "Futures of transit work Contesting Devaluation and Neoliberal Automation in Bus Transit" by Hunter Akridge & Sarah E. Fox

beth semel@bethmsemel.bsky.social · 5mo ago

interested in questions of tech, labor, and worker futures? on April 10 in Princeton i'm hosting an outstanding lineup of panelists at "the future of (data) work," where speakers will discuss the ethnographic, archival, and participatory action research they've conducted with data + tech workers

poster for "the future of (data) work." top right corner contains event info: April 10, 9:30-4:30pm, Aaron Burr Hall 219." Under the title is the conference description: "The rapid expansion and commercialization of artificial intelligence systems has been enabled by the upscaling of data work, defined by Miceli and Posada as 'the labor involved in the collection, curation, classification, labeling, and verification of data.' Amidst debates about how 'intelligence machines' will impact the global workforce, this conference brings together a multidisciplinary group of scholars and organizers to examine the histories, topographies, and lived realities of data work around the world, centering the people behind the platforms that dominate our present to imagine alternative futures." Underneath this text is the list of panelists and their affiliations: Beth Semel, Organizer, (Assistant Professor, Dept of Anthro, Richard Stockton Picentennial Preceptor) Hunter Akridge Research Assistant (Grad Student, Dept of Anthro), Alex Hanna (DAIR), Seyi Olojo (UC Berkeley), Cindy Kaiying Lin (Georgia Institute of Tech), Julian Posada (Yale), Shivani Kapania (CMU), Samantha Dalal (Princeton CITP) Lilly Irani (UCSD), Sarah Fox (CMU). The background image, from Hanna Barakat/Archival Images of AI/AIxDesign, is a picture of hands yanking invisible strings through a rare earth mineral with a microchip superimposed over it set against. On the bottom of the poster are the sponsors (Princeton AI Lab, Princeton Dept of Anthro), and a QR code for the program).
Sarah Fox@perhaxis.bsky.social · 8mo ago

What’s augmentation-washing? In a new piece out at @techpolicypress.bsky.social, we argue that “augmentation” language reframes automation as empowerment—masking real shifts in control, workload, and labor relations.

Dean Jackson@dwj.eurosky.social · 8mo ago

“Cobots” are framed as collaborators—but in practice, automation reorganizes workers around machines. This is augmentation-washing: empowerment language concealing less agency and more labor. Sarah Fox and Samantha Shorey for @techpolicypress.bsky.social www.techpolicy.press/how-augmenta...

Cella@cellllla.bsky.social · 10mo ago

👋 Hello #CSCW2025! I’ll be presenting my paper on tech worker organizing on Monday at 4:30pm in the Advocacy Work session and my dissertation work “From the Future of Work to the Future of Labor: Centering Worker Resistance in Age of AI and Automation” at the demos/posters reception! Please say hi!

Cella@cellllla.bsky.social · 11mo ago

What can #CSCW learn from tech workers who have been involved in collective action and unionization about how to make transformative change within our field? My new #CSCW2025 paper with Mona Wang, Anna Konvicka, and Sarah Fox seeks to answer this question. Pre-print: arxiv.org/pdf/2508.12579

Screenshot of the CSCW 2025 paper "The Future of Tech Labor: How Workers are Organizing and Transforming the Computing Industry" CELLA M. SUM, Carnegie Mellon University, USA ANNA KONVICKA, Princeton University, USA MONA WANG, Princeton University, USA SARAH E. FOX, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Abstract: The tech industry’s shifting landscape and the growing precarity of its labor force have spurred unionization efforts among tech workers. These workers turn to collective action to improve their working conditions and to protest unethical practices within their workplaces. To better understand this movement, we interviewed 44 U.S.-based tech worker-organizers to examine their motivations, strategies, challenges, and future visions for labor organizing. These workers included engineers, product managers, customer support specialists, QA analysts, logistics workers, gig workers, and union staff organizers. Our findings reveal that, contrary to popular narratives of prestige and privilege within the tech industry, tech workers face fragmented and unstable work environments which contribute to their disempowerment and hinder their organizing efforts. Despite these difficulties, organizers are laying the groundwork for a more resilient tech worker movement through community building and expanding political consciousness. By situating these dynamics within broader structural and ideological forces, we identify ways for the CSCW community to build solidarity with tech workers who are materially transforming our field through their organizing efforts.
Sarah Fox@perhaxis.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Couldn’t be prouder of Franky Spektor, who successfully defended her dissertation today: "Documentation as Direct Action: Alternative Data Practices for the Labor Movement"! 🎉Her work surfaces the risks of data-driven evidentiary standards that too often obscure, rather than reveal, workplace harm.

Sam Shorey@samshorey.bsky.social · last yr.

Out now in the AI Hype special issue in Digital Journalism, "Automating Essential Work:" 📰 10 years of news stories 📈 tech company execs become sources when the industry shifts from traditional automation to robots 👷🏻‍♀️ 0 quotes from on-the-ground workers doi.org/10.1080/2167...

Emma Strubell@strubell.bsky.social · last yr.

I did an interview w/ Pittsburgh's NPR station to share some of my views on the topic of the McCormick/Trump AI & Energy summit at CMU tomorrow. Despite being hosted at the university, there will not be opportunities for our university experts to contribute viewpoints at the event.

WESA@wesa.fm · last yr.

President Donald Trump travels to Carnegie Mellon University Tuesday for a summit on energy and artificial intelligence. Leaders say Western Pennsylvania's universities and natural-gas deposits could be vital to both industries. But researchers are concerned about AI's energy demands.

Tamara Kneese@tamigraph.bsky.social · last yr.

New pub out from @davidthewid.bsky.social and me. We suggest that computer science should learn from anthropology’s critical examination of its colonial roots. AI for good projects like low resource NLP resemble early salvage anthropology projects, where anthros tried to preserve “dying” languages

Salvage Anthropology and Low-Resource NLP: What Computer Science Should Learn from the Social Sciences | Interactions

This forum focuses on the conditions and futures of the labor underpinning technology production and maintenance. We welcome standalone articles as well as interviews and conversations about all tech ...

dl.acm.org

Miriam Posner@miriamposner.com · 2y ago

Students should study the humanities not because it makes them better workers but because it rips you open and breaks your brain and changes everything you thought you knew. I *promise* you this. I *promise* it has this ability, no matter how smart you think you are. I have seen it countless times.

Lauren Donovan Ginsberg@laurenginsberg.bsky.social · 2y ago

Hearing the president of KU say that the way the humanities can protect itself - a question asked by a humanities professor of Spanish - is that her field should direct its public voice to how the Spanish language can impact AI versus the third study of an obscure play…. Just sigh.