What if your boss was an algorithm? Economic incentives, legal challenges, and the rise of artifical intelligence at work
The Future of Work is an age-old fascination: with every new wave of technological innovation comes a series of thorny questions about its impact on the labor market. Will jobs be replaced by the new technology? If not, how will they be reshaped? What are the broader implications, both for individual workers and legal regulation more generally? Recent technological advances have brought many of these questions back to the fore, notably in the context of the gig economy, enabled by mobile phones equipped with powerful processors, fast Internet connections, and highly accurate satellite navigation.1 The labor market challenges inherent in a world of platform-based labor intermediation are considerable, from worker classification and collective rights protection to health and safety, tax, and social security provisions. These issues have rightly been at the forefront of courts’ and policy-makers’ attention, both domestically and at the international level.