Automatic for the people: the automation of communicative labor

Artificial intelligence and communication: A Human–Machine Communication research agenda

“…What these technologies share is that by functioning as a communicator, they all step into a role that, within the conceptual confines of the communication discipline, historically has been restricted to humans. In doing so, AI more than facilitates communication: it automates communication (Reeves, 2016) as well as the social processes dependent upon it (Gehl and Bakardjieva, 2017).…”

“…More than a decade ago, Zhao (2006) called for researchers to pay greater attention to the social implications of human-like technologies, and, more recently, Reeves (2016) offered a similar charge, urging critical scholars to examine the shifting nature of technology. Technology and its design play a vital role in the social configurations of society (Suchman, 2009); even before the advent of AI, devices were considered to be communicative, in that they embody cultural values around which human relationships and social structures form (Marvin, 1990).…”

“…Broussard, 2018; Noble, 2018). From this perspective, the technology’s ability to stand in for a person as a communicator, thus automating the communication process, potentially erases and devalues the human that once stood in its spot and also threatens social processes, such as democracy, that hinge on human communication (Reeves, 2016). For example, scholars have argued that the use of gender and other human-like cues in technology, such as a virtual female assistant, also socially and economically degrades the status of those particular groups, such as human assistants (e.g.…”

“…The economic and political struggles accompanying the automation of communication are viewed as recent instantiations of similar issues within industrial automation (e.g. Reeves, 2016). With the increasing integration of communicative AI into the home and other personal spaces, the locus of this struggle for power is shifting into the domestic sphere (Fortunati, 2017).…”

Automation and Adaptation: Reshaping journalistic labor in the newsroom library

“…As a result, automation in Lanier’s view merely reorders human labor but does not displace it altogether (2014). In practice, the automated workplace has, however, concurrently enabled more extensive managerial control of labor, while diminishing the volatility that can arise from human error (Hardt, 1990; Reeves, 2016). The tension between the boundless opportunity of machine-driven efficiency and the inclination toward human control of technology is certainly not the exclusive province of any particular industry.…”