Your Boss Is an Algorithm: Artificial Intelligence, Platform Work and Labour

What effect do robots, algorithms, and online platforms have on the world of work? Using case studies and examples from across the EU, the UK, and the US, this book provides a compass to navigate this technological transformation as well as the regulatory options available, and proposes a new map for the era of radical digital advancements.

From platform work to the gig-economy and the impact of artificial intelligence, algorithmic management, and digital surveillance on workplaces, technology has overwhelming consequences for everyone's lives, reshaping the labour market and straining social institutions. Contrary to preliminary analyses forecasting the threat of human work obsolescence, the book demonstrates that digital tools are more likely to replace managerial roles and intensify organisational processes in workplaces, rather than opening the way for mass job displacement.

Can flexibility and protection be reconciled so that legal frameworks uphold innovation? How can we address the pervasive power of AI-enabled monitoring? How likely is it that the gig-economy model will emerge as a new organisational paradigm across sectors? And what can social partners and political players do to adopt effective regulation?

Technology is never neutral. It can and must be governed, to ensure that progress favours the many. Digital transformation can be an essential ally, from the warehouse to the office, but it must be tested in terms of social and political sustainability, not only through the lenses of economic convenience. Your Boss Is an Algorithm offers a guide to explore these new scenarios, their promises, and perils.

Antonio Aloisi is Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow and Associate professor of European and comparative labour law at IE University Law School, Spain. Before joining IE University, he was a Max Weber postdoctoral fellow at the European University Institute (EUI), Florence, Italy. He holds a PhD in Business and Social Law from Bocconi University, Milan, Italy (2018).

Antonio's research focuses on the impact of digital innovation on labour regulation and social institutions in the European Union and beyond. The aim of his Boss Ex Machina project, which has received funding from the EU Horizon 2020 programme, is to map practices of algorithmic decision-making and assess the adequacy of existing legal frameworks when it comes to enabling sustainable data-driven workplaces.

Antonio was previously a visiting researcher at the Saint Louis University, USA, and worked for the Italian Ministry of Education. He has been involved in various projects on platform work, non-standard employment, and collective rights, commissioned by international organisations and research centres. He has authored several articles, book chapters, and op-eds.

Valerio De Stefano is Canada Research Chair in Innovation, Law and Society, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Canada. He was previously BOF-ZAP Professor of Labour Law at the Institute for Labour Law, University of Leuven, Belgium. Valerio's research focuses on artificial intelligence, people analytics and the workplace, and platform-based work in the gig-economy. He holds a PhD in Law of Business and Commerce from Bocconi University, Milan, Italy (2011).

From 2014 to 2017, Valerio was an officer of the International Labour Organization. He has been the principal investigator of several major grants about labour and technology, including from the FWO - Research Foundation Flanders and Horizon2020. In 2020, Valerio was awarded the Service to Society Prize by KU Leuven for his public engagement based on his research. He has been a consultant for the ILO, several EU institutions, and national governments. He is co-editor of the Dispatches section of the Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal and a member of the OECD Network of Experts on AI (ONE AI).