On February 24th, Creative Labour and Critical Futures (CLCF) hosted Antonio Casilli for a thought-provoking discussion on his latest book, Waiting for Robots: The Hired Hands of Automation (University of Chicago Press). In this talk, Casilli dismantled the historic narrative that artificial intelligence will eventually replace a large proportion of human jobs. Instead, he highlighted the vast, often invisible workforce behind AI—millions of underpaid workers across the globe (primarily located in the Global South) whose job is to annotate, train, verify, and sometimes even impersonate these so-called “autonomous” systems.

From Kenyan workers earning under $2 an hour to label toxic data, to entire rooms in Madagascar live-streaming European supermarkets under the guise of AI surveillance, Casilli showed that much of what we call automation is, in reality, human labour: displaced and obfuscated. This outsourcing of digital work follows historical patterns of labor exploitation, but now with new layers of precarity—gig-like jobs that are fragmented, underpaid, and largely invisibilized.

According to geographic mapping conducted by Casilli and colleagues, the majority of these data workers live in Kenya, South Africa, India, and the Philippines.  According to the World Bank, there are an estimated 154 million to 435 million data workers around the globe. What does this data work look like? People working from homes or cyber cafés, earning cents to dollars per task, sometimes with the promise of extra-monetary compensation like food or rent.

The talk also addressed common and long-standing misconceptions around AI job replacement. While reports like the infamous 2013 Oxford study warned that 47% of jobs would vanish due to automation, real-world evidence suggests otherwise. As Casilli’s extensive research tracing AI data production demonstrates, AI hasn’t eliminated jobs—it has shifted them to less visible, lower-wage  economies.

Casilli called for greater transparency in AI supply chains and policy interventions that go beyond only regulating AI’s use to examining how and where it is produced. He also discussed alternative models such as platform cooperativism, unionization of data workers, and digital universal basic income.

Ultimately, Casilli’s message was clear: “robots aren’t stealing our jobs—capitalists are.” AI is not replacing human labor; it’s outsourcing it.

Interested in learning more?

📚 Order Waiting for Robots: The Hired Hands of Automation at The University of Chicago Press.

🔎 Follow Casilli’s work as co-founder of the Digital Platform Labor (DiPLab) research program and of International Network on Digital Labor (INDL).

🎞️ Stay tuned for Casilli’s forthcoming documentary In the Belly of AI.

✨ Check out CLCF’s activities for future talks and events.