Question for Julia Ticona on Imagining AI in organized labor

[muhua-h]

Questions for Dr. Julia Ticona's talks.

Imagining AI in organized labor: Struggles over the value of cultural work. The popularization of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools has raised concerns about the future of creativity and cultural work. In recent months, AI has become a key sticking point in labor negotiations for workers in media industries, from journalists to actors to film and television writers, many of whom are contending with the possibility of automation for the first time. Through interviews, ethnographic observation, and discourse analysis, this collaborative project investigates how cultural workers – and the unions that represent them – conceptualize generative AI and how these conceptualizations in turn shape 1) labor demands and 2) cultural workers’ understandings of their work and status relative to other occupational groups. The project’s goals are to deepen scholarly and popular understanding of the social processes by which collective meaning is assigned to emerging workplace technologies, and to consider how these assigned meanings have implications for ongoing labor struggles and inter-occupational solidarity. Findings will be disseminated via at least two peer-reviewed scholarly articles, presentations at academic conferences and research-oriented labor convenings, and a written summary of the findings geared toward labor leaders.

Reading List:

• Imagining AI in organized labor: Struggles over the value of cultural work
• Constructing What Counts as Human at Work: Enigma, Emotion, and Error in Connective Labor

[Jessieliao2001]

Thanks for sharing! How might the conflict over AI’s role in cultural industries influence productivity growth and the structure of creative-sector labor markets over the next decade?

[dario-marino]

Do you think it is possible to use computational methods in this case to complement the interviews?

[CanaanCui]

Thanks for sharing this intriguing topic! Your proposed question—how cultural workers’ narratives about generative AI shape their labor demands and class solidarity—perfectly captures the essence of the study. I’m curious about your take: How do cultural workers’ collective imaginaries of AI influence their strategies for negotiating labor protections and building inter-occupational solidarity in media industries?

[Jessieliao2001]

Thanks for sharing this intriguing topic! Your proposed question—how cultural workers’ narratives about generative AI shape their labor demands and class solidarity—perfectly captures the essence of the study. I’m curious about your take: How do cultural workers’ collective imaginaries of AI influence their strategies for negotiating labor protections and building inter-occupational solidarity in media industries?

I think cultural workers’ shared imaginaries of AI—as either a collaborative assistant or an existential threat—directly shape their bargaining posture and coalition‐building. When AI is framed as a tool that augments human creativity, unions tend to push for co-design rights, training funds, and profit-sharing arrangements, which fosters cross-guild alliances around upskilling. Conversely, when AI is cast as a force that devalues labor, strategies lean toward aggressive work‐preservation demands—like strict use-limits and replacement safeguards—which can both galvanize solidarity within a craft (e.g., writers) and create friction with adjacent professions less threatened. Ultimately, these narratives determine whether negotiations emphasize partnership with management or collective defense, and they set the tone for broader alliances across media occupations.

[BaileyMeche]

Thanks for sharing your work, Dr. Ticona. How do you see the narratives constructed by cultural workers around AI influencing broader labor market segmentation, especially in terms of who gets to define "non-rote" or "human" work across occupational classes?

[saniazeb8]

Thank you for sharing. How are cultural workers and their unions emotionally and rhetorically navigating the tension between technological innovation and professional identity, and in what ways are these negotiations reshaping labor solidarity and perceptions of creative labor’s value in the age of generative AI?

[BaileyMeche]

Thanks for sharing this intriguing topic! Your proposed question—how cultural workers’ narratives about generative AI shape their labor demands and class solidarity—perfectly captures the essence of the study. I’m curious about your take: How do cultural workers’ collective imaginaries of AI influence their strategies for negotiating labor protections and building inter-occupational solidarity in media industries?

Based on what I gathered from the paper, cultural workers' collective imaginaries of AI play a big role in shaping how they push for labor protections and connect with other types of workers. For example, the paper explains that as generative AI tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E started making headlines, cultural workers began constructing narratives that emphasized their work as creative, unique, and deeply human. These narratives are not just reactions, they're strategic. Workers and their unions use them to argue that AI can't replace the emotional, intuitive, and unpredictable nature of their labor. This framing helps justify demands like limits on AI use in creative processes or stronger intellectual property protections.

At the same time, these imaginaries seem to affect how cultural workers see themselves in relation to other workers. If AI is framed as a threat to “authentic” or “non-rote” human labor, that can strengthen solidarity with other occupations facing similar concerns (like therapists or teachers, as described in the Pugh article). But it could also make them see their jobs as exceptional and harder to relate to more routine or lower-status work, possibly complicating broader solidarity. So overall, the way cultural workers imagine AI isn't just abstract, those ideas feed directly into real-world strategies for collective bargaining and influence how they build alliances across job sectors.

[jialeCharloote]

Thx for sharing! How do differing conceptualizations of generative AI among various cultural worker unions reflect and reproduce existing hierarchies within creative industries, and what tensions arise when these groups attempt to form inter-occupational solidarity in the face of technological disruption?

[jialeCharloote]

Thank you for sharing. How are cultural workers and their unions emotionally and rhetorically navigating the tension between technological innovation and professional identity, and in what ways are these negotiations reshaping labor solidarity and perceptions of creative labor’s value in the age of generative AI?

Additionally, I’m curious how these narratives differ across occupational groups—do journalists, actors, and writers adopt different moral or strategic framings of AI's encroachment? And what does that reveal about inter-occupational fault lines or possibilities for cross-sector solidarity?

[ZheruiLU]

Thanks for sharing this fascinating research! Your exploration into how connective labor practitioners differentiate themselves from AI by emphasizing emotional intuition, mistakes, and judgment highlights intriguing dynamics in contemporary workplaces. I'm curious about your insights regarding inequality: Given that disadvantaged workers often can't leverage "human errors" or emotional risks to assert their humanness, how do you see automation potentially reshaping the professional boundaries and value of interpersonal labor across different socioeconomic groups?

[ZheruiLU]

Thanks for sharing this intriguing topic! Your proposed question—how cultural workers’ narratives about generative AI shape their labor demands and class solidarity—perfectly captures the essence of the study. I’m curious about your take: How do cultural workers’ collective imaginaries of AI influence their strategies for negotiating labor protections and building inter-occupational solidarity in media industries?

I think the paper shows that the collective imaginaries cultural workers build around generative AI operate as a strategic toolkit in bargaining: When AI is cast as a substitution threat workers unite around defensive demands—e.g., hard limits on AI-generated content, mandatory human attribution/compensation, and joint AI working groups. Framing AI as an existential risk for creativity creates a common adversary that can knit together writers, on-screen talent, editors, and journalists, broadening inter-guild solidarity

While when AI is imagined as a creative augmentor, unions pivot to proactive agendas: paid up-skilling, co-design rights, and profit-sharing for AI-enhanced outputs. This optimistic frame emphasizes complementarities between historically distinct crafts (say, game designers and screenwriters), recasting solidarity as joint stewardship of human-centered creativity. Because these imaginaries simultaneously locate the value within creative labor and map relations between occupational groups, they shape who lines up with whom and what protections they pursue. In other words, the story workers tell about AI determines both their bargaining targets and the breadth of the coalitions they can forge across media industries;

[jstanleyi]

Thanks for sharing. I am thinking, how does the concept of “connective labor” expand or complicate Hochschild’s theory of emotional labor, particularly in relation to workers’ ability to claim authenticity and emotional insight as forms of professional legitimacy? While Hochschild focused on managing emotion to produce desired feelings in others (often under employer control), Pugh’s “connective labor” highlights relational witnessing, intuition, and mutual recognition - raising the question of whether these practices should still be categorized as emotional labor or something distinct.

[zcyou018]

Thanks for sharing! How do cultural workers’ conceptualizations of AI as either a threat to or a tool for creative labor intersect with broader narratives of professional identity, and what implications does this have for fostering inter-occupational solidarity with workers in more traditionally 'automatable' sectors?

[zcyou018]

Thanks for sharing! How might the conflict over AI’s role in cultural industries influence productivity growth and the structure of creative-sector labor markets over the next decade?

We expect the conflict over AI to shape not just productivity but the very structure of creative labor. Some roles may become more tech-assisted, while others double down on human authorship. This divide could redefine job categories and deepen debates over what counts as “creative” work—making labor organizing and narrative framing more crucial than ever.

[PENGRUISU]

Thank you for sharing your work, Dr. Ticona. How do you think the narratives created by cultural workers around AI shape broader labor market segmentation—particularly regarding who gets to define what counts as “human” or “non-rote” work across different occupational groups?