Paper short abstract:

Over the last decade, Aerotech have been experimenting with automated decision-making tools and digital assistants that can support the flying crew and. We argue that pilots look at AI technologies and their sensing capabilities with an hopeful skepticism—which reflects their labour experiences.

Paper long abstract:

Over the last decade, Aerotech have been experimenting with automated decision-making tools and digital assistants that can support the flying crew and, in the medium run, take over the functions of co-pilots. But what would be required to make such human-autonomy teaming systems (HATS) work, considering the relational complexity of the cockpit? How would HAT systems sense the pilots?

This paper builds on 30 interviews with airline pilots conducted since November 2019, which aimed at exploring the assistance pilots wanted to receive from AI tools—a co-design approach that hoped to influence the choices of aviotech companies.

Our findings suggest that pilots look at AI technologies and digital flight assistants with an hopeful skepticism—particularly with regards to the sensing capabilities of HAT. AI team mates were seen as a digital reincarnation of flight engineers—a welcome support to free pilots from some of their cognitive labour. However, pilots were skeptical that the recommendations of AI tools could be empathetic enough to satisfy their need for emotional support during delicate phases of the flight. On the one hand, pilots wanted HAT systems to “sense” their feelings, and respond in kind. On the other hand, “sensing” their emotional and relational status projected them as vulnerable. This was particularly true for pilots who had worked in exploitative or controlling airlines. These pilots were uncomfortable with AI tools that recorded their voice and offered advice based on sensing processes that might reflect what the company dictated, rather than their actual needs.

Paper short abstract:

Grounded in digital ethnography of the RegTech and compliance industry, as well as interviews with compliance officers and other experts, this paper aims to open up a critical discussion of the increasing and yet often expertly hidden power of compliance, now enhanced by data analytics.

Paper long abstract:

The RegTech (regulatory technologies) industry sells an AI-powered paradigm shift: from KYC (know your customer) to KYD (know your data) – be it in the name of enhanced due diligence, insider threat management, anti-money laundering, anti-corruption, or risk mitigation in supply chains. But what does “knowing your data” mean within the logic of compliance (as governance)? And what consequences, intended and unintended does it have? This paper sheds light on the recent growth of the RegTech industry at the intersection of compliance, private intelligence and tech, arguing that it is high time we pay critical attention to this industry. After all, it is transforming the ways in which workers, suppliers, supply chains, and customers are governed. RegTech data-driven and ‘AI-powered’ solutions for monitoring, surveillance, auditing, risk assessments and prediction, threat detection, (semi-)automated decision making, originally developed for highly regulated industries such as finance, are spreading rapidly into other industries, reshaping the algorithmic architectures of governance across organizations and sectors. RegTechs are typically informed by (behavioural) economics, psychometrics, theories of ‘counterproductive work behaviour’ and the logics of audit and risk, while utilizing diverse techniques of profiling and forensics imported from (predictive) policing and intelligence work (the industry being populated by former police and intelligence officers). Only when we theorize RegTech within the framework of privatization and pluralization of policing, the ‘criminalization’ of compliance and the logic of technosolutionism, can we understand what is at stake in predictive data-driven criminalized compliance as governance. Are algorithmic injustices and brutalization lurking behind seamless compliance?

Paper short abstract:

We explore how digital technologies are put to use to (re)organize the rules, procedures and practices of sustainability assurance in aquaculture. We identify shifts in the ways in which trust in sustainable production is institutionalized in the aquaculture sector.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the emergence of digital sustainability assurance in the aquaculture sector. Over the past decades, third-party certifications have emerged as the dominant mechanism to assure the sustainability of aquaculture products. Certifications are designed to rely on ‘analog’ means of assurance including in-person audit visits to production locations. Digital technologies provide new opportunities to collect and verify data, assess sustainability and identify areas of improvement. Satellite imagery, drones and sensors enable remote monitoring. Blockchain technology allows for temper-proof information sharing in value chains. Using digital applications, distant actors can communicate in real time. Together, they promise to make sustainability assurance more transparent, effective, efficient, accurate, accessible and scalable. We explore how digitalization enables shifts in - and novels forms of - assurance. Based on interviews with key experts and organizations in the aquaculture sector, we investigate how digital technologies are put to use to (re)organize the rules, procedures and practices of sustainability assurance. Building on the sociology of trust, we then identify shifts in the ways in which trust in sustainable production is institutionalized in the aquaculture sector. Preliminary analysis reveals a shift towards both increased surveillance as well as a stronger focus on enabling improvement as logics of trust.

Paper short abstract:

Focusing on the implementation of powered exoskeletons in working sectors and their potential of digital surveillance, this contribution aims to deconstruct narratives built around increase of productivity at the expense of destroying workers’ bodies and of de-skilling them.

Paper long abstract:

The concept of “embodied liminality” (Turner 1982) has a long history in anthropology. Current technologies, such as exoskeletons, developed for some stages within supply chains, raise questions about what future corporeal capitals are stake in these environments. Exoskeletons enter a long history of technologies shaping worlds of working, but especially worlds of working bodies. Logistics and automotive sectors are among the most concerned for such applications. Still, unlike other gadgets functioning with software that have a concrete impact on productivity, their peculiarity is that they are literally attached to human bodies. In this regard, exoskeletons physically shape what these bodies ‘can’ in specific working environments. As some of these devices may record the movements of their users, questions about the traceability and accountability of the wearer’s performance occur.

The aim of my presentation is to discuss from a socio-anthropological perspective the feasibility of such politico-economical projects. Whereas media scholars advance the category of “embodied computing” to describe “humans as blended entities” (Iliadis and Pedersen 2018), the facts I observed during a multi-sited ethnography conducted over several years contradict this view. Narratives of efficiency and innovation are rather construed around conceptions of “de-skilling” and “re-skilling” the workers’ bodies and their professional capitals. Whereas the use of powered exoskeletons may indeed compel to reimagine current technopolitical corporealities in worlds of work, these devices also highlight that “bodies are not universally quantifiable” (Moore and Robinson 2016: 2782), requiring the establishment of novel critical epistemologies to assess these transformations.