Generative AI has the potential to transform how firms produce output. Yet, credible evidence on how AI is actually substituting for human labor remains limited. In this paper, we study firm-level substitution between contracted online labor and generative AI using payments data from a large U.S. expense management platform. We track quarterly spending from Q3 2021 to Q3 2025 on online labor marketplaces (such as Upwork and Fiverr) and leading AI model providers. To identify causal effects, we exploit the October 2022 release of ChatGPT as a common adoption shock and estimate a difference-in-differences model. We provide a novel measure of exposure based on the share of spending at online labor marketplaces prior to the shock. Firms with greater exposure to online labor adopt AI earlier and more intensively following the shock, while simultaneously reducing spending on contracted labor. By Q3 2025, firms in the highest exposure quartile increase their share of spending on AI model providers by 0.8 percentage points relative to the lowest exposure quartile, alongside significant declines in labor marketplace spending. Combining these responses yields a direct estimate of substitution: among the most exposed firms, a \$1 decline in online labor spending is associated with approximately \$0.03 of additional AI spending, implying order-of-magnitude cost savings from replacing outsourced tasks with AI services. These effects are heterogeneous across firms and emerge gradually over time. Taken together, our results provide the first direct, micro-level evidence that generative AI is being used as a partial substitute for human labor in production.
Naomi W. Kingau, Quinette A. Louw, Maria Y. Charumbira
Background: Kenya faces significant challenges in addressing the impact of various health conditions. Understanding the functioning problems associated with these conditions is crucial for informing targeted interventions and improving overall healthcare outcomes.
Objectives: This study aimed to determine the prevalence and types of functioning problems associated with health conditions contributing most to Years Lived with Disability in the adult Kenyan population and to identify the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) domains and categories most affected.
Method: A scoping review was conducted. Searches were performed across multiple databases using relevant keywords and inclusion criteria. Studies published between January 2006 and December 2023 were eligible. Data were extracted from 39 eligible studies using a web-based software application (Rehab4all).
Results: Major depressive disorder, human immunodeficiency virus, low back pain and fractures were identified as the leading conditions contributing to functioning problems in Kenya. The most prevalent problems included walking difficulties, paraesthesia, various forms of pain and depression. The most affected ICF domains were mobility (d4), sensory function and pain (b2) and mental (b1).
Conclusion: The comprehensive description of functioning problems associated with priority health conditions in Kenya can be used to develop targeted interventions to improve health outcomes across affected domains.
Contribution: This research enhances comprehension of disability burden guiding intervention development and policy formulation for improved rehabilitation and offers a platform for further evidence-based strategies to tackle the country’s complex health challenges.
Vocational rehabilitation. Employment of people with disabilities, Communities. Classes. Races
Platform laborers play an indispensable yet hidden role in building and sustaining AI systems. Drawing on an eight-month ethnography of Bangladesh's platform labor industry and inspired by Gray and Suri, we conceptualize Ghostcrafting AI to describe how workers materially enable AI while remaining invisible or erased from recognition. Workers pursue platform labor as a path to prestige and mobility but sustain themselves through resourceful, situated learning - renting cyber-cafe computers, copying gig templates, following tutorials in unfamiliar languages, and relying on peer networks. At the same time, they face exploitative wages, unreliable payments, biased algorithms, and governance structures that make their labor precarious and invisible. To cope, they develop tactical repertoires such as identity masking, bypassing platform fees, and pirated tools. These practices reveal both AI's dependency on ghostcrafted labor and the urgent need for design, policy, and governance interventions that ensure fairness, recognition, and sustainability in platform futures.
Robin A. Lange, Anna Gibson, Milo Z. Trujillo
et al.
Invisible labor is an intrinsic part of the modern workplace, and includes labor that is undervalued or unrecognized such as creating collaborative atmospheres. Open source software (OSS) is software that is viewable, editable and shareable by anyone with internet access. Contributors are mostly volunteers, who participate for personal edification and because they believe in the spirit of OSS rather than for employment. Volunteerism often leads to high personnel turnover, poor maintenance and inconsistent project management. This in turn, leads to a difficulty with sustainability long term. We believe that the key to sustainable management is the invisible labor that occurs behind the scenes. It is unclear how OSS contributors think about the invisible labor they perform or how that affects OSS sustainability. We interviewed OSS contributors and asked them about their invisible labor contributions, leadership departure, membership turnover and sustainability. We found that invisible labor is responsible for good leadership, reducing contributor turnover, and creating legitimacy for the project as an organization.
O presente artigo busca apresentar como são socializados e mediados os saberes e conhecimentos dentro de um Terreiro de Candomblé, localizado na cidade de Jequié/BA, bem como apresentar a forma de mediação do conhecimento que acontece nele como antipedagógica, uma vez que sua estrutura está amparada nos saberes e nas práticas ancestrais e são ressemantizados e ressignificados. Por mais que apresentemos o tema como antipedagógico, percebemos que os conhecimentos são passados por meio de uma organização, que media o saber a partir de uma prática personalizada, fornecendo ao aprendiz a condição de um aprendizado singular proveniente de conhecimento pertencente ao grupo. Este artigo se lastreia teoricamente nas obras dos autores: Olivio (2016), Quijano (2005), Dore e Souza (2018), Gauthier (1998), Lima (2003), Prandi (2001), Braga (1998) e outros.
Social Sciences, Labor in politics. Political activity of the working class
Sobia Nawaz, Dr. Filza Shaukat, Dr.Mariam Liaquat
et al.
Background: The entrapment of the cervical nerves results in a clinical condition known as cervical radiculopathy.
Objective: To determine the effects of neural mobilization with and without cervical lateral glide of pain, range of motion and functional disability in patients with cervical radiculopathy
Methodology: A randomized clinical trial done in Physiotherapy Department OPD of Allied Hospital, Faisalabad. 86 cervical radiculopathy patients divided into two equal groups. Convenient sampling technique was used. Both genders of age of 25 to 45 were included. Tumors, fractures, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, and extended steroid use were excluded. The routine physical therapy, neural mobilzation along with cervical lateral gliding administered to Group A subjects. Group B received neural mobilization with routine physical therapy. Data was collected on the baseline,2nd week and then at 4th weeks. Numeric pain rating and neck disability index, Goniometer was used for assessment.
Result: For between group analysis independent sample t-test u test used which shows there is a significant difference in before and after intervention as p-values of all outcome measures were less than 0.05 in post-intervention. Repeated measure ANOVA was used for within group comparison which shows both groups show effectiveness but group A shows more significant results as their mean differences is more than group B.
Conclusion: It is concluded that both techniques are effective but incorporating cervical lateral glides into neural mobilization has yielded more significant results in this study.
Key Term: Cervical radiculopathy, pain, range of motion and functional disability, neural mobilization.
Vocational rehabilitation. Employment of people with disabilities, Therapeutics. Psychotherapy
AbstractThis paper explores how the years after World War II in Western Europe were an extreme case of working-class power. An initial theoretical discussion claims that while class can best be understood as a social category, at the same time politics in the broadest sense—and hence class-based movements—can shape social structure. This was the case in the in the post-World War II period when the working class dominated West European societies: especially perhaps in Britain, the “weight” of the working class shaped the nation. Trade union organization and state power ensured collective rights and were the basis for autonomous consumption; class identity was a source of pride. The end of this period saw trade union density continuing to increase. In the USA as well as in Western Europe, the power of management in the workplace was challenged. Especially in Western Europe, there was widespread radicalization of working-class youth. This was the last offensive of the working-class movement. However, power in the workplace remained essentially a veto-power. In the USA, oppositional politics became ethnic politics and even before de-industrialisation the white working class began to abandon its traditional politics. Nonetheless, in Western Europe the long shadow of the working-class movement ensured the partial survival of social rights long after the traditional social basis of the movement had withered away.
Partial resetting, whereby a state variable $x(t)$ is reset at random times to a value $a x (t)$, $0\leq a \leq 1$, generalizes conventional resetting by introducing the resetting strength $a$ as a parameter. Partial resetting generates a broad family of non-equilibrium steady states (NESS) that interpolates between the conventional NESS at strong resetting ($a=0$) and a Gaussian distribution at weak resetting ($a \to 1$). Here, such resetting processes are studied from a thermodynamic perspective, and the mean cost associated with maintaining such NESS are derived. The resetting phase of the dynamics is implemented by a resetting potential $Φ(x)$ that mediates the resets in finite time. By working in an ensemble of trajectories with a fixed number of resets, we study both the steady-state properties of the propagator and its moments. The thermodynamic work needed to sustain the resulting NESS is then investigated. We find that different resetting traps can give rise to rates of work with widely different dependencies on the resetting strength $a$. Surprisingly, in the case of resets mediated by a harmonic trap with otherwise free diffusive motion, the asymptotic rate of work is insensitive to the value of $a$. For general anharmonic traps, the asymptotic rate of work can be either increasing or decreasing as a function of the strength $a$, depending on the degree of anharmonicity. Counter to intuition, the rate of work can therefore in some cases increase as the resetting becomes weaker $(a\to 1)$ although the work vanishes at $a=1$. Work in the presence of a background potential is also considered. Numerical simulations confirm our findings.
Tech workers -- professional workers in the technology industry including software engineers, product managers, UX designers, etc. -- are not normally associated with labor activism. Yet, since 2017, we have seen a significant rise in labor actions among this group. Using an original dataset, we demonstrate how, in the case of tech workers, periods of intense workplace social activism preceded later periods of heightened labor activism. Regression analysis confirms that participation in social activism increases the likelihood of labor activism six months to one year later at the same company. This finding extends Fantasia's cultures of solidarity argument to professional workers. We find that organizing emerges out of collective action and ensuing conflict with management: first, tech workers, guided by their professional interest in socially beneficial work, engage in workplace social activism. This generates solidarity among employee-participants but also creates conflict with management and leads to the emergence of labor activism among professionals.
The development of Autonomous Vehicle (AV) has created a novel job, the safety driver, recruited from experienced drivers to supervise and operate AV in numerous driving missions. Safety drivers usually work with non-perfect AV in high-risk real-world traffic environments for road testing tasks. However, this group of workers is under-explored in the HCI community. To fill this gap, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 26 safety drivers. Our results present how safety drivers cope with defective algorithms and shape and calibrate their perceptions while working with AV. We found that, as front-line workers, safety drivers are forced to take risks accumulated from the AV industry upstream and are also confronting restricted self-development in working for AV development. We contribute the first empirical evidence of the lived experience of safety drivers, the first passengers in the development of AV, and also the grassroots workers for AV, which can shed light on future human-AI interaction research.
This essay examines how automation has reconfigured mathematical proof and labor, and what might happen in the future. It discusses practical standards of proof, distinguishes between prominent forms of automation in research, provides critiques of recurring assumptions, and asks how automation might reshape economies of labor and credit.
Carlos Góes, Gladys Lopez-Acevedo, Raymond Robertson
Gender segmentation in labor markets shapes the local effects of international trade. We develop a theory that combines exports with gender-segmented labor markets and show that, in this framework, foreign demand shocks may either increase or decrease the female-to-male employment ratio. If a foreign demand shock happens in a female-intensive (male-intensive) sector, the model predicts that the female-to-male employment ratio should increase (decrease). We then use plausibly exogenous variation in the exposure of Tunisian local labor markets to foreign demand shocks and show that the empirical results are consistent with the theoretical prediction. In Tunisia, a developing country with a high degree of gender segmentation in labor markets, foreign-demand shocks have been relatively larger in male-intensive sectors. This induced a decrease in the female-to-male employment ratio, with households likely substituting female for male labor supply.
In the Maracaibo of 1799, Spanish authorities claimed to have uncovered a revolutionary plot to overthrow the Spanish monarchy and install a republic modeled on Saint-Domingue. In existing historical accounts, Spanish officials, free colored (pardo) militiamen in Maracaibo, and an Atlantic crew of sailors coming from Port-au-Prince play the leading roles. Although Spanish officials also claimed Guajiro Indians were coordinating and cooperating, they appear as peripheral actors. As Guajiros and their allies were more numerous and powerful than any non-Indian group in the area, and controlled the territory and waterways on which part of the trade with New Granada depended, we signal the centrality of indigenous patterns of trade, warfare, politics, and diplomacy to explain events in this corner of the revolutionary Atlantic. Thus, and in order to specify the limits of the Atlantic revolution, we argue for the need to study micro-histories of particular Guajiro leaders and their kinship-territorial networks, as well as Spanish officials and captains and crews of particular ships from European colonies.
Purpose: to present the main assumptions of Aristotleʼs Politics through the prism of the category of national security. Also, to reflect on the characteristics of political systems presented by Aristotle as the basis for the search for the essence of the functioning of the state, as well as an attempt to describe the perfect state (politeia).
Method: the research was conducted using the following general scientific and special methods: the historical method during the study of the development of the political systems by Aristotle in chronological order; the method of analysis and synthesis related to the functioning of the state by Aristotle, abstract-logical method – for formulating theoretical generalizations and research conclusions.
The results of the study: in the history of socio-political thought, Politics should be perceived as an important work that was the first to scientifically deal with the entire spectrum of issues of internal and external politics, tasks faced by rulers and citizens, goals of the state, and factors of its stability and development.
Theoretical implications: deepened unique perception of the state, in line with the spirit of antiquity, in which the boundary between politics and ethics is not clearly drawn. It really matters, as seen from the current approaches to the roles the state is able or supposed to play. That’s why it is worth treating the research as a good starting point for analyzing the tasks of the state, including national security.
Практична цінність дослідження: the results of the research can be considered, while analyzing the socio-political theory of Aristotle, as a supporter of the democratic system - looking for inspiration and parallel solutions for the political culture of current liberal democratic societies.
Papertype: theoretical.
The essay proposes a reconstruction of the main quantitative and qualitative theories that have emerged in economics about the impacts on the labour market deriving from the progressive replacement of human labour by robots. In light of this, the Author acknowledges several interpretative lines observed in the industry for about a decade. Such an analysis is functional to investigate how the process of man-machine substitution (or its threat) responds not exclusively to deterministic logic linked to technological progress. Instead, it closely intertwines with strategic choices originating in processes that characterise labour law and industrial relations, particularly affecting the determination of the working conditions of underqualified and, thus, more easily replaceable workers. Indeed, if the regulation of the phenomenon were determined solely by mercantile interests, this would present a risk to the very stability of the welfare state. Therefore, it is urgent to activate the protection techniques offered by labour law to encourage the spread of robotics that, instead of aiming at replacing workers tout court, aspires to make their work less burdensome and, thus, more dignified.
OBJECTIVES A growing proportion of the US labor force juggles paid work with family caregiving of older adults. However, no research has examined caregivers' work environments. The purpose of this brief report is to develop typologies of the work environments of family caregivers. METHODS This study used data drawn from the 2008-2012 waves of the Health and Retirement Study. Our sample includes employed individuals who also provided regular help with daily activities to a parent or spouse (n=976). We used latent class analysis to develop caregiver work environment typologies. RESULTS Our analyses revealed four typologies among caregivers: a) high quality work environments (n=340; 35%); b) average work environments with high job lock (n=293; 30%); c) low-quality work environments (n=203; 21%), and d) high personal interference in supportive work environments (n=140; 14%). Although only 21% of working caregivers were in a low-quality work environment (Type C), descriptive results suggest that these workers were most likely to be minorities who needed to work for financial reasons, reporting the highest number of health problems, and the most work hours. DISCUSSION Our findings provide insights into the types of environments that caregivers work in, and the characteristics of individuals in those environments. We discuss implications of our findings for future research and work-based policy development.
This article explores the organizational culture of the startup scene in Finland. Startup companies offer an interesting setting for research, because their organizational culture, hierarchy and power structures differ from those of large traditional organizations. The method used in this study was an organizational ethnography in a startup company in Finland, which included participant observation, and interviews with employees. The organizational culture of the startup was informal, relaxed, low in hierarchy, and employees had autonomy for deciding on their working times and locations. Masculinities were visible in the organizational culture of the startup company in the form of ‘harsh’ language and rambunctious humor, men changing their behavior and discussion topics when women were around, and managers communicating more aggressively with men than with women. The results further showed that gender was a criterion for inclusion and exclusion. The research concludes that startup companies are not gender-neutral spaces.