Artificial intelligence, digital technologies, and labour control

Arif Kosar

This article was originally published in Teori ve Eylem, No.72, June 2026

Introduction

A frequently overlooked aspect of digital technologies is the control of work and labour processes and its impact on workers. While it is a common view that new technologies make human labour unnecessary, jobs are increasing rather than decreasing in contemporary capitalist society. Artificial intelligence, robotics and digital technologies are indeed eliminating some jobs while simultaneously creating and growing numerous new job and professional fields. ^[2] The mainstream debate surrounding the quantity of employment leaves out the major qualitative changes in employment, such as the way work is done, control techniques, the concentration of work and precariousness. ^[3]

One of the critical aspects of this change is the deepening of capital’s domination over labour through digital technologies. Digital control tools are used to monitor the activities and movements of employees, dictate their work pace, predict their behaviour, measure their productivity, and assign tasks. ^[4] Digitalization in work activities also paves the way for the decommissioning, de-skilling, and measurability of work, thereby increasing control over the labour process.

The aim of this article is to discuss the mechanisms by which digital technologies, in their form as capital, deepen the domination of labour, a phenomenon often overlooked under the influence of techno-progressive ideology. The study draws upon traditional literature on labour control as well as ongoing critical science, technology, and society literature surrounding artificial intelligence. Within the various impacts of AI technologies on work and employment, the dimension of labour control is highlighted, using contemporary work practices and examples. The article’s central argument is that, despite techno-utopian discourse, digital technologies are being used to reinforce despotic labour regimes, and this use is becoming increasingly widespread.

Formal and real domination

Capitalism is a mode of production based on the separation of labour from the ownership of the means of production. Since the labourer does not own the means of production and subsistence, they are forced to offer their labour power at the service of the property owners. Therefore, the capitalist system of production and ownership itself forces labourers into an unequal relationship with the property owners, which forms the structural basis of labour control.

At the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, in the early stages of capitalist development, Marx described this relationship, in which the means of production take the form of capital and the worker takes the form of wage labour, as the formal yoke of capital over labour. ^[5] At this stage, capital systematizes and extends working hours; it shortens and conditions breaks, thus ensuring the continuity of the production process. The production activity, that is, how seriously individual workers perform their jobs, is monitored and controlled by employers or their representatives. Here, we are dealing with the primitive and classical form of labour control. It is simple control based on the direct supervision of the worker and hierarchical structure. ^[6] Although simple or direct control is generally associated with the early stages of capitalism, it is a form of control that continues in the contemporary business world, especially in small and medium-sized enterprises. In this relationship, workers, with their craft-like qualities, have a certain control over the labour process and the work. The capitalist’s control is external and, in this sense, formal. The worker’s control over the work provides him with a certain autonomy vis-à-vis capital.

However, capital is not content with formal domination over labour. Since the labour process is also a process of producing surplus value, that is, of valorization, it wants to consume labour power as much as possible and concentrate labour. The machine, which replaces the tool, is used for this purpose. While part of the work is performed by the machine, the worker has to adapt to the machine, its rhythm and its way of working. Thus, capital in the form of a machine now subjects the production activity to internal and direct control, which is now the real yoke of capital over labour. ^[7]

In the transition from formal subjugation to actual subjugation, the use of machines in the form of capital in the production process is of decisive importance. In Marx’s words, “ Even the easing of work becomes an instrument of torture, since the machine liberates the worker not from work but from the content of work. The use of the means of labour by the worker, rather than the worker using the means of labour, is the common feature of all capitalist production insofar as it is not only the process of labour but also the process of capital valorization; however, this reversal acquires a tangible technical reality for the first time with the machine. ” ^[8]

Machines have been functional for capital not only in terms of technically increasing productivity, but also in terms of breaking down the work done by labour into parts, determining the pace of work and increasing control over labour. In every craft branch where machines have entered in the form of capital, the worker’s control over the work has decreased and control over the workers has been made easier through the machine. ^[9]

At the beginning of the 20th century, the expansion of production capacity, the emergence of large monopolies, and the institutionalization of technical innovations broadened the dominance of capital over the labour process. Industrial management expert Frederick Winslow Taylor developed a work management strategy which he called “scientific management,” involving the division of the labour process into unskilled parts, the deepening of the division of labour, the detailed definition of each task, and the analysis of time and motion. One of the most important elements of the strategy is the separation of physical and mental labour, the transfer of work planning to a specialized team, ensuring that the worker focuses only on physical and repetitive work, and thus taking control over labour to extreme forms. The fundamental element in this control is the abstraction of the worker from production knowledge, the removal of design, method of work, and planning from the worker, and their transfer to a specialized team. ^[10] Technical innovations such as new machines and conveyor belt systems greatly accelerated the deepening of the division of labour, which was continued with Taylorist logic.

This internal takeover of labour management is a process of renegotiation and reconstruction within the context of power relations at each new development and stage. This has always been a fundamental dimension in capital’s struggle against labour. Through technical advancements in the work process, capital has aimed not only to increase productivity but also to become as independent as possible from the labour chain and strengthen its own position. The automation and digitalization processes that accelerated after the Second World War are no exception. The transfer of work to digital systems has led to its fragmentation and deskilling, thus devaluing labour and expanding capital’s dominance over it. However, this process is not a one-dimensional one; it is a dynamic social field that is constantly being re-constructed and fought over.

Positioning Artificial Intelligence

It is widely believed that artificial intelligence technologies, which sometimes achieve surprising successes such as productive AI applications, are different from previous technologies in terms of economic relations and working life. However, the function of artificial intelligence in particular, and digital technologies in general, in working life is no different from that of past technologies. Just like the machines that came before them, artificial intelligence technologies take over and automate some of the jobs performed by humans. Routine jobs, in particular, are susceptible to automation, and the share of routine industrial jobs in total employment is decreasing in Western countries. This is consistent with the routine-based technical change hypothesis, which is the dominant approach in the literature. ^[11]

However, there are some developments that this hypothesis cannot explain. While the share of some routine industrial occupations in total employment is decreasing with artificial intelligence technologies, numerous complementary and new tasks are emerging, a significant portion of which are routine. As the task composition of jobs and occupations changes, jobs requiring skill and creativity are being fragmented and becoming routine. The deskilling effect of technological developments is also valid here. This is a characteristic feature of the history of mechanization since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Instead of eliminating people from work, employers have used technology, and sometimes even just the idea of ​​technology, to transform relatively good jobs into bad jobs by dividing craft jobs into semi-skilled jobs and hiding human labour behind a technological device. ^[12]

The techno-fetishism and techno-utopianism surrounding artificial intelligence serve to obscure the impact of digital technologies on working life. The use of artificial intelligence in workplaces and the dominant form of digital transformation are addressed through the idea of ​​”inevitability,” and as this is combined with utopian imagination, its function in the capital-labour relationship is ignored. However, the digitalization of work processes is based on the fragmentation of labour processes, their reduction to simple, programmable components, and the deskilling of work. Therefore, the use of artificial intelligence in work processes occurs as a current extension of the deepening of real domination.

New digital dimensions of labour control

The control and actual domination of capital over labour power has deepened and gained new dimensions with digitalization and artificial intelligence technologies. ^[13] Workers’ labour activity, behavior, movements and relationships can be monitored in real time with various digital tools and algorithms. Internet usage tracking, GPS tracking, keyboard logging, email monitoring, social media monitoring, voice and video recording, off-duty behavior monitoring and monitoring of company devices are some of these methods. Surveillance technologies used within the facility enable the monitoring and analysis of workers’ activities in their physical spaces, and the measurement of productivity and adaptation to workplace culture. These tools are not only suitable for large businesses but also for small and medium-sized enterprises thanks to cloud-based usage. They are used in various sectors such as banking, financial services and insurance, public services, information technology, manufacturing, retail, hospitality, transportation and logistics. ^[14]

Digital control technologies vary across sectors, taking on different forms depending on business size, the nature of the work, skill levels, gender composition, and worker organization. Despite this diversity, the effects of digital control tools, which reinforce existing trends within the labour process, can be assessed under two main headings. The first is related to the formal domination of capital over labour; the second is related to the real domination that occurs intertwined with the first.

Digital surveillance and formal domination

Formal domination is the relationship of domination established by the capitalist over the worker by controlling the worker’s workday and rhythm of work without interfering with the organization and content of the work. This simple control, seen in its most primitive form in businesses through the supervisor’s oversight and the pressure of “hurry up” ^[15], has gained new forms and dimensions with digital tools.

Electronic surveillance mechanisms, cameras, card and turnstile systems, and numerous other applications aimed at measuring and monitoring entry and exit times and time spent at work are widely used. Large retail chains, fast food restaurants, and media organizations can use biometric systems such as fingerprint scanners and facial recognition to monitor employees’ entry and exit times and working hours. ^[16]

Digital technologies also track work during working hours. Boston-based Cogito Corporation uses AI tools to listen to customer service calls and rate employees on how quickly and effectively they resolve complaints and demonstrate empathy. Microsoft’s MyAnalytics calculates employee “productivity” based on emails, calendar data, and phone calls. Veriato, specializing in employee tracking, claims to determine productivity levels by recording all types of activity on workers’ keyboards. KeenCorp measures employee loyalty levels based on email and other data. A system called OccupEye uses sensors in employees’ chairs to calculate how often they are at their desks and how long they take breaks. ^[17]

With its surveillance practices in order fulfillment centers and warehouses, Amazon serves as a labouratory for the use of new digital surveillance tools. To fulfill its promise of fast and seamless delivery, Amazon heavily utilizes labour control software, forcing workers to work faster. Barcode scanners and other digital tools used by workers record their real-time locations, movements, and behaviors, transmitting the data to a software called ADAPT. ADAPT monitors workers’ ability to meet the number of tasks they are required to complete per hour, tracking “off-time” (ToT), i.e., the time the worker is disconnected from the device for meal breaks, restroom breaks, or other reasons. The data generated is used to force workers to maintain what is called the “Amazon pace.” This pace results in significantly higher injury rates than the industry average at Amazon, with numerous workers being fired for failing to meet sufficient task quotas. ^[18]

Digital applications aimed at monitoring and speeding up work are widely used in professions where the craft nature of the work is preserved and fragmentation is limited. In Turkey, the MHRS (Central Physician Appointment System), which organizes the distribution of physician appointments in public hospitals nationwide, is beneficial in terms of directing patients to suitable hospital and physician appointments and accessing health services, but the same system is used to increase the workload of physicians. Since the necessary examination times, which may vary according to the physicians’ specialties, are not taken into account, it leads to significant problems and the deterioration of the quality of health services. While an appointment is given to a patient every ten minutes in the system, examination times can be reduced to five minutes with examinations without appointments. Thus, the appointment distribution system turns into a capital tool that imposes excessive work on physicians on behalf of the Ministry of Health, i.e., the employer. ^[19]

Digital surveillance and actual control

The way digital technologies facilitate formal domination over labour by tracking and directing the workday, shifts, working hours, and work rhythm is often just one dimension of the overall process. Because, in real life, digital technologies are not only used for external control, but also condition changes in the organization and performance of work. They enable real domination over labour through the fragmentation and de-skilling of work. Therefore, while the formal domination/control dimensions of digital control tools reinforce real domination/control, the reverse is also true. They are intertwined and in some cases difficult, even unnecessary, to distinguish from each other.

For example, while digital systems like MHRS (National Health System Appointment System) may seem limited to the formal control of physicians, MHRS and other related digital tools interfere not only with the physicians’ work rhythm but also with the way their work is done. The collection and analysis of patient and physician data, along with imposing restrictions or offering incentives on physicians regarding medication use, examination times, tests, and the use of various devices, constitutes an internal interference in the practice of medicine, a highly specialized and professional field. This approach, which often interferes with physicians’ diagnoses and treatments for economic reasons, is striking in that it demonstrates attempts at the real domination of labour, even when theoretical and practical knowledge cannot be separated from physicians. Therefore, in real life, formal domination and real tools of domination often intertwine and manifest as the control and domination of capital over labour.

The management and planning of work, and the abstraction of work knowledge from the worker, are critical dimensions of true domination, and in this respect, the process can be traced under two main headings.

Algorithmic management: The digitalization of management

Algorithmic management is a set of digital tools and techniques that make automated or semi-automated decisions to manage work and workforce, based on data collection and employee monitoring. ^[20]

With these types of management and control algorithms, some of the tasks previously performed by managers and supervisory personnel have been taken over by machines. Although they focus on different tasks and have different functions, three fundamental characteristics of digital control tools stand out:

• Assigning tasks to workers and determining how those tasks will be performed.
• Measuring performance by recording and analyzing workers’ movements, locations, behaviors, tasks performed, and working and break times.
• Suggesting changes to the work organization (such as layoffs) based on performance measurements and other data.

With these characteristics, the functions of planning, managing, monitoring and updating work organization, which are one of the most important elements of Taylorist strategy, are now separated not only from the workers but also from middle managers and are automated to some extent. Through algorithms, specific tasks are dictated to the workers, whether they perform these tasks is checked, and the performance of the workers is measured with the collected data. With algorithmic management, workers are monitored with a higher level of detail and more sophisticated methods, and data on their movements, behaviors and emotions are collected. Using this data, the “productivity” or personnel scores of the workers are calculated, and managerial decisions can be made accordingly. ^[21]

Digital labour platforms are typical examples of algorithmic management styles, having employed them from their inception. While platforms exhibit significant differences, their common feature is algorithmic control over the labour process and labour force management. On these platforms, algorithms assign tasks to workers, analyze data from clients, and thus determine workers’ futures within the system or the volume of work they will receive. ^[22] In mass labour platforms, where small jobs are distributed to the international digital workforce based on wage competition , ^[23] various dimensions of algorithmic management are at work in labour control. Some platforms operate with freelance labour, but they have strict rules similar to paid employment, and deviating from these rules can result in expulsion from the platform. Algorithmic tracking, monitoring, and scoring are used in job distribution and compensation. Typically, platforms automatically decide whether a task has been successfully completed or allow clients to decide and score employees accordingly. Since scoring determines workers’ future job potential, the system tightens employer control over workers. On some platforms, when it comes to hourly wages, clients are allowed to monitor workers through random screenshots or keystroke counters. For example, the digital labour platform Upwork takes 6 screenshots per hour from workers’ screens at unspecified times. If the screenshot is not work-related, no payment is made for that time. Because the worker does not know when the screenshot will be taken, they cannot leave their computer at certain times to attend to any needs, make phone calls if they receive a call, or access another site to do another job. Thus, the autonomy presupposed by location-independent work is significantly curtailed on digital labour platforms. In addition to piecework, control over the worker is increased through direct digital surveillance. ^[24]

Unlike digital labour platforms that have used algorithmic management since their inception, the use of digital technologies in traditional workplaces has been more diverse and varied. In these workplaces, algorithmic management has been implemented in interaction with existing organizational structures, and therefore has shown some differences. Depending on sectoral characteristics, the application of algorithmic management has developed at different rates across the economy. It is widely used in the logistics sector, including transportation, warehousing, and delivery services. Algorithmic monitoring and evaluation are becoming increasingly common in the retail, food, and hospitality sectors. Similar applications are also found in other sectors such as banks, consulting firms, call centers, media organizations, healthcare, and manufacturing. In the service sector, customer satisfaction ratings are becoming an important management tool. ^[25]

Amazon’s algorithmic management system tracks worker movements, collects and analyzes data, and assigns tasks to workers, specifying how those tasks should be completed. Barcode scanners used by workers also serve as a monitoring and assignment tool, assigning tasks and collecting data on their movements, behavior, and attitudes. Through barcode scanners, workers receive information about the products they will pick up within the warehouse, the route they will take to reach the product, and the destination where they will deliver it, and they follow the instructions. The digital system also measures and monitors worker performance by determining the number of tasks completed, the speed at which they are performed, and how time is used.

Digitalization, deskilling, and the devaluation of work

Digital technologies have further reinforced Taylorism’s tendency toward the fragmentation, standardization, and devaluation of work. ^[26] This argument contradicts the widespread understanding that routine jobs are being automated and disappearing with artificial intelligence and new technologies. The hypothesis of routine-based technological change, which underlies this understanding, is true to some extent. Indeed, the share of some occupations based on routine and repetitive tasks in employment is decreasing. However, while employment in occupations requiring higher education and skills is increasing, the proportion of routine within the task mix of these occupations is rising. These jobs are becoming increasingly standardized. Digital technologies are not only affecting job loss or creation but also shaping the content of work by influencing how people do work. ^[27]

Using data from the European Working Conditions survey, Bisello et al. examined the changes in the job content, methods, and tools of work in Europe between 1995 and 2015. The results are surprising given the dominant discourse, as there is a real increase in the overall levels of routine in work. Standardization and repetition are directly related to the use of new technologies. This correlation is particularly evident in services such as financial intermediation, real estate, leasing, business operations, and public administration. Standardization and repeatability linked to the use of digital technologies are most pronounced among managers, professionals, technicians, and support staff, as well as office support workers.

Despite the common approach that interprets the automation of routine tasks in a one-sided manner, there is a direct relationship between the breakdown of tasks into small, unskilled components and algorithmic management. Mechanization, and digital technologies as a form of it, are based on the breakdown of the labour process into small, definable parts, thus mechanizing work. In the 1830s, Charles Babbage applied algorithms to a mechanical system when he considered breaking down intellectual operations, such as complex calculations, into small, repeatable sequences and having this repeatable process performed by a system of gears and machines. Breaking down tasks, turning them into defined jobs, and mechanizing them has been a fundamental pattern since the Industrial Revolution. If a difficult and skilled job can be broken down into small parts, and if the tacit information can be extracted, then these small, repeatable, simple tasks can be performed more cheaply by “unskilled” workers. This kind of fragmentation forms the basis for the digital control of work, and digital technologies also encourage the fragmentation of work.

Crowdworking platforms are a striking example of this. On these platforms, jobs and therefore the workforce are often radically fragmented. A large work plan and data set are broken down into extremely small micro-tasks, most of which can be solved in minutes or even seconds. Tasks are automatically distributed and supervised by the platform’s algorithmic architecture to workers around the world. This level of global division of labour has only been made possible by digital technologies. It is an extremely detailed division of labour, almost meaningless to the worker. Workers do not know that their work is related to weapon manufacturing or the use of solar energy. They simply perform small tasks. To enable this distribution of work, labour and work are highly standardized, and this standardization facilitates control over workers. Much of the processes are automated, which reinforces information asymmetry and one-way command patterns between platforms and workers. ^[28]

Large language models and generative AI tools are also accelerating the deskilling of work, thus facilitating labour control. For example, in design work, which is left to the creativity of graphic designers and therefore contains uncertainties, some creative stages of design have been eliminated by generative AI tools. Thus, the work is reduced, at least in some cases, to tasks that do not require much creativity, such as the technical application of the design produced by AI tools. From the graphic designer’s perspective, while creativity provides the worker with a certain autonomy, the transfer of some design work to generative AI applications and the transformation of the graphic designer into an implementer/practitioner facilitates the control of the capitalist. While this does not mean that creativity and skill are not yet important for graphic designers, the risk of deskilling of work is clearly visible in a significant part of the graphic designers’ field of work. One of the most important elements of Taylorist labour control is the breakdown of the particularly skilled parts of the work into smaller parts and their transformation into a collection of unskilled tasks, thus transferring control of the part of the work performed autonomously by the worker from the worker to the capitalist.

Monitoring and control

Workers are exposed to the control of capital over the labour process because they are separated from the means of production and forced to sell their labour power. In this respect, the transformation of the means of production, including digital technologies, into capital forms is the material basis of the power inequality between labour and capital. Developing the means of production and, in this context, digitalization, is an intrinsic tendency of capital in its search for more (relative) surplus value in capitalist competition. ^[29] This tendency itself constitutes the objective basis of contemporary patterns in the form of the fragmentation of work processes, the devaluation of work, and digitalization. Despite the benefits of digitalization and some technological products in terms of use value, these technologies are used, produced, and shaped in capitalist society to devalue labour power, deskill work, and increase control over labour and work intensity. The fact that the monitoring and control of workers has become a sector in itself is directly linked to the use of new technologies in a capitalist context.

Numerous studies have documented the damage that the intensification of labour control through digital tools causes to the physical and mental health of workers. Constant monitoring can lead to stress, anxiety, depression, and burnout ^[30] ; headaches, sleep disorders, and cardiovascular diseases. ^[31] Workers, pressured by surveillance and productivity measurements, are exposed to workloads that strain their physical and mental health. As a result, they go to the toilet less often, take fewer breaks, and meet their basic needs such as water less frequently. ^[32] With the pace created by digital surveillance and productivity measurements at Amazon, workplace accidents are far above the average of the logistics sector. ^[33]

Digital surveillance practices, which reduce autonomy at work, increase workload and pressure, and threaten workers’ health, also condition workers’ reactions and counter-struggle. Surveillance is not merely the unilateral action or domination of the capitalist or management. It is a reciprocal relationship based on power inequality and struggle. It is not independent of economic and political conditions, but it is concretized on a specific space-time axis and on the basis of specific power relations. The extent to which the relevant technology can be applied and which dimensions of it can be implemented is not only a technical issue but also a political issue linked to power relations. ^[34]

Therefore, for example, in conditions where there is strong worker organization, even if digital monitoring tools collect and analyze various data of workers and arrive at a “low” productivity result, whether this productivity is low or what decision should be made if it is low is a matter of mutual struggle, including workers’ resistance. In conditions where worker organization is weak, as in Amazon, many workers are fired for low productivity scores and failure to meet the set quotas ^[35] , while in another workplace where it is strong, these quotas can be renegotiated and reduced. Furthermore, digital monitoring processes are limited to formal control in some jobs depending on the nature of the work. Although the Taylorist management approach aims to completely free the worker from knowledge about the work, this cannot be fully achieved. The human labour process is not independent of consciousness, and there is no purely physical work devoid of intellectual activity. Therefore, in some professions and fields of work, digital monitoring has to take different forms and sometimes soften in the face of the worker’s autonomous knowledge and various levels of autonomy.

Furthermore, some digital tools used for labour control have been introduced to businesses or the market with specific needs in mind, and possess qualities that allow them to be used outside of the market framework. When the MHRS (National Health System Monitoring System), used to monitor physicians, is redesigned as an algorithm that operates in communication with doctors, and when at least examination times are determined by humane and medical principles rather than capitalist ones, it can be used in a way that strengthens people’s access to quality healthcare.

Therefore, capitalist labour control, which has taken on digital forms, is not absolute. It is relational, containing the conflict of opposing forces. There may be discrepancies between the content and claim of control and its reality. These tools can be restricted through struggle, and when power relations are reversed, they can be reconstructed for other purposes. However, under the influence of the ideological hegemony created by the mystical and fetishistic wind blowing around digitalization and especially artificial intelligence, technological developments and applications are abstracted from their social nature, reduced to a mere technical destiny. Every technological development is interpreted as a historical advancement for the benefit of all. Thus, the intensification of digital control methods as part of digitalization is facilitated by this ideological fallacy.

Conclusion

Digital technologies have significantly increased capital’s capacity to monitor labour power and deepen its domination over it. Data and algorithms are used to dictate the pace of work, monitor workers’ activities and movements, and predict their behavior. Managers’ focus on efficiency and productivity, combined with digital technologies, reduces workers to data, to indicators of body and behavior. Digital technologies, which reduce people to data in terms of location, movement, task, and time use, impose specific tasks on workers, the manner and speed of performing those tasks, through the analysis of this data. This expands information asymmetry, coercion, and discipline, ultimately increasing the power in the hands of capitalists. ^[36]

When digital control tools are integrated into the ongoing relationship between capital and labour in the workplace, they become intertwined with existing structural inequalities and power relations, and their effects manifest within this context. In this context, they have been implemented as a tool to strengthen capital’s dominance over labour, to internalize control that has already ceased to be external/formal, to fragment work, and to devalue labour. In some businesses, the process of managing and controlling work has shifted from middle-level managers to machines, and control has become automated.

The use of digital technologies in business takes different forms depending on location, sector, business size, culture, gender, national inequalities, legal regulations and worker organization, and these forms sometimes intertwine. Class power relations also play a critical role in determining the extent to which control will be applied. In this respect, the capitalist dominance strengthened through digital technologies is not absolute. Despite the extreme division of labour among workers, their job and profession-related expertise has not completely disappeared, and it is not possible to completely separate physical work from mental processes. The authoritarian management methods of digital technologies also trigger counter-struggle, and in some cases, the imposition of algorithmic management can be prevented. ^[37] Thus, the ground is strengthened for questioning digital technologies again and more strongly as an agenda of the political field, beyond the technical field in which they are confined.

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Sherman, N. (2024) “Amazon Aware Of Warehouse Injury Risk, report finds”, BBC , https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyjm507462o

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Wood, A., Graham, M., Lehdonvirta, V., Hjorth, I. (2019) “Good gig, bad gig: autonomy and algorithmic control in the global gig economy”, Work, Employment and Society , 33(1), 56–75, https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017018785616.

1. This is an updated version of Arif Koşar’s article titled “Digital Technologies and Labour Control” published in the Journal of Society and Physician. Koşar, A. (2025) “Digital Technologies and Labour Control”, Society and Physician , 40(4), 268-276. ↩
2. Shen, Y., Zhang, X. (2024) “The impact of artificial intelligence on employment: the role of virtual agglomeration”, Palgrave Communications , 11(1), 1-14; Autor, DH (2019) “Work of the Past, Work of the Future”, AEA Papers and Proceedings , 109: 1–32; Chowdhry, A. (2018) “Artificial Intelligence to Create 58 Million New Jobs By 2022, Says Report”, https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2018/09/18/artificial-intelligence-to-create-58-million-new-jobs-by-2022-says-report/?sh=1f0b27e24d4b ↩
3. Spencer, DA (2018) “Fear and hope in an age of mass automation: debating the future of work”, New Technology, Work and Employment , 33(1), 1–12. ↩
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25. Baiocco et al., ibid. ↩
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