Disrupting Technology Conference held at Leeds
The 3rd international Disrupting Technology conference was held on the 16th and 17th June at Cloth Hall Court in Leeds.
The two-day event, co-hosted by the Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change (University of Leeds), with the ESRC Centre for Digital Futures at Work, and organised by Ioulia Bessa, Esme Terry, Mark Stuart and Amelia Bradley-Newby (University of Leeds), saw over 80 delegates come together to discuss the impact of digital technologies on the world of work and employment. Attendees arrived from institutions across the UK and 14 other countries around the globe, including Australia, Argentina, Nigeria, India, and several European nations.
Professor Mark Stuart, co-director of Digit, opened the event, welcoming attendees, and using it as an opportunity to announce that Leeds will be hosting next year’s International Labour Process Conference.
Monday’s keynote session was delivered by Professor Mark Graham, Director at Fairwork, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. Professor Graham’s talk focused on the Fairwork Action Research Project, and the organisation’s scoring system used across the world to assess the fairness of working conditions on digital labour platforms. He also talked about the hidden human labour that is powering AI.
Dr Uma Rani, Senior Economist, International Labour Organisation, gave Tuesday's keynote presentation, detailing the experiences of data annotation and content moderation workers in India and Kenya, also shining a light on the human input behind AI.
Both days featured paper sessions where researchers presented their latest work, answered questions from the audience, and gained valuable feedback. Session themes ranged from automation to gig work, from health and social care to sustainability and digital transitions, among others. Researchers from all career stages attended and presented at the conference, including a significant number of postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers.
Monday night’s conference dinner gave an opportunity for networking and further discussion between delegates, and to celebrate the launch of Digit’s second five-year phase.
