The AI Godot Effect: The Mirage of Total Automation and its Hidden Workers
- Date
- February 20, 2025
- Time
- 10:00 AM EST - 11:30 AM EST
- Location
- TRS 1-147, 7th Floor, 55 Dundas St. West, Toronto, ON, M5G 2C5
- Contact
- Mathieu Lajante <mathieu.lajante@torontomu.ca>
In this talk, Antonio Casilli, professor at Institut Polytechnique de Paris and author of the award-winning "Waiting for Robots: The Hidden Hands of Automation" (University of Chicago Press, 2025), explores a persistent phenomenon in AI development: the recurring promise of complete automation that perpetually remains just out of reach, while obscuring the essential human labor that powers AI systems. Drawing from global research on AI production networks, he examines how the narrative of inevitable total automation serves to hide the growing workforce of data laborers, content moderators and infrastructure maintenance workers. Casilli analyzes this 'Godot Effect' across multiple sectors and proposes new frameworks for understanding AI not as a purely technological system, but as a manifestation of capitalist labor practices that thrive on colonial exploitation and global workforce invisibility.
About Antonio Casilli
Antonio Casilli is a Professor of Sociology at Institut Polytechnique de Paris and a member of the CNRS Interdisciplinary Institute on Innovation. His research focuses on digital labor, AI workers' rights, and platform capitalism. His influential publications have been translated into several languages. His latest book, originally published in French as "En attendant les robots" (Seuil, 2019), has been published in English by the University of Chicago Press as "Waiting for Robots" (2025). He has co-founded several international initiatives, including the research program DiPLab (Digital Platform Labor) and INDL (International Network on Digital Labor).
