Project funded by SSHRC Insight Grant.
SUMMARY
The rapid spread of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping cultural industries and resetting the priorities of labour struggles. New technologies such as voice cloning, automated scriptwriting, and vibe coding are rapidly transforming the craft and livelihood of cultural workers, including screenwriters, voice actors, and game developers. While cultural workers have begun to resist these changes, most visibly during the 2023 Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes, public and policy debates on AI governance focus largely on the United States and only rarely place workers at the centre. This project investigates and aims to strengthen what we term “worker-led AI governance.”, the workers’ ability to act collectively, via organizing, bargaining, and campaigning, to shape how AI is used, managed, or rejected in the workplace. Rather than treating workers only as passively affected by AI, this project positions them as active agents in shaping both workplace practices and public debate.. The project’s main goal is to build transnational and cross-sectoral strategies for worker-led AI governance in Canada and Brazil. It examines three cultural subsectors where the use of AI is rapidly advancing and increasingly contentious: screenwriting, voice acting, and digital games. The project, through participatory action research (PAR), will (1) comparatively analyze the sources of worker power mobilized in each country; and (2) actively promote shared learning and transnational collaboration among cultural workers’ organizations. The research brings together Canada and Brazil, countries with qualitatively different political-economic contexts but grappling with common technological transformations. Canada has comparatively stronger unions in the cultural industries, but Canadian policy discussions on AI have tended to overlook workers. Brazil has a less formal union structure in the field, but a vibrant culture of grassroots organizing among workers. Comparing labour activity between these two contexts will reveal how different conditions shape workers’ ability to intervene in relation to AI. This research advances knowledge by shifting the focus from the impacts of AI to the possibilities (and limits) of exercising workers’ agency to democratize the uses of this technology at work. Theoretically, the project (1) adopts a political-economic approach that recognizes how global imbalances and dependencies shape local struggles; (2) through Power Resources Approach, it analyzes how workers build and wield collective agency by mobilizing institutional power (legal rights, union organizations), structural power (bargaining capacity), and discursive power (ability to shape public narratives); (3) integrates a “learning-in-struggle” framework to examine how workers can collectively share and adapt power resources across different national and sectoral contexts. The research involves two phases (1) Mapping Power Resources: uses documentary analysis and interviews with cultural workers to identify and analyze power resources; (2) Catalyzing Shared Learnings: employs binational participatory focus groups and exchange visits to facilitate the co-production of strategies to support worker-led AI governance. The project prioritizes knowledge mobilization that amplifies the participants’ collective ability to craft effective strategies and shape public debate. It makes a significant contribution to digital labour and critical AI studies by countering the prevailing popular narrative of the inevitability of AI’s rollout. By centering the collective organizations and mutual learning of workers, this project advances a novel framework for approaching AI implementation as a site of struggle. We approach AI governance as a fundamentally negotiated process, follow the lead of workers themselves, and center workers’ collective organizations and mutual learning to share strategic successes and challenges.
TEAM
Rafael Grohmann, University of Toronto, Principal Investigator
Greig de Peuter, Wilfrid Laurier University, Co-Investigator
Daphne Idiz, York University, Co-Investigator
Andre Campos Rocha, Independent Researcher, Collaborator
Claudia Nonato, Paulista University, Collaborator
Daniel Rios, Federal Fluminense University, Collaborator
Julice Salvagni, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Collaborator
Mary Elizabeth (M.E.) Luka, University of Toronto, Collaborator
Tanner Mirrlees, Ontario Tech University, Collaborator
