media
Research featured in new book: Mobilizing Data for Justice ↗
Our work on collaborating with worker communities to build tools and research to support labor organizing and advocacy is featured in the new book: Mobilizing Data for Justice.
a distributed group of researchers, technologists, and activists building community-driven alternatives to extractive AI systems and supporting labor organizing in the algorithmic age.
research
Recent updates—talks, papers, reports, and media. Coverage of our work on how memory and personalization risks making LLMs more sycophantic. Freddy Reiber (BU) examines how employers weaponize digital technologies to suppress union organizing, drawing on three distinct cases to develop a preliminary model of digitally facilitated union busting. WAO project led by Dana with Samantha Dalal and Varun Rao — designed FairFare with CIDU organizers in Colorado to crowdsource difficult-to-access rideshare worker data for policy advocacy. Varun Rao led the design of a tool with a rideshare labor union in WA to help them automate the process of contesting arbitrary AI and algorithmic deactivations.
updates
media
media
MIT News: Personalization features can make LLMs more agreeable
paper
New paper accepted at CHI 2026: How Digital Technology Facilitates Union Busting ↗
paper
FairFare: A Tool for Crowdsourcing Rideshare Data to Empower Organizers — Accepted at CHI 2026 ↗
paper
FareShare: A Tool for Labor Organizers to Estimate Lost Wages and Contest Arbitrary AI and Algorithmic Deactivations — Accepted at CSCW 2026 ↗
Current projects and ongoing work. Lightweight, easy-to-train adapters that allow communities to customize LLMs can help decentralize AI use and help communities experiment with how to best use AI systems. Through ethnographic and qualitative work, we are working to understand how and when marginalized groups like the LGBTQ+ community successfully develop community-driven platforms that are more aligned with their values and needs. We are studying how online platforms' algorithms and policies shape the material conditions and labor of content creators and cultural workers. We are building new crowdsourcing tools that will allow users of platforms, ranging from Instagram to TikTok to Doordash, donate data to researchers and advocates with minimal effort. Police departments across the US are increasingly using AI tools for surveillance and automation of police work, such as filing police reports from body cam footage. We are working to evaluate the risks and failures of using AI in high-risk scenarios like law enforcement. We are using a corpus of hundreds of articles and press releases about AI use in law enforcement automation and surveillance as a case example to theorize and empirically examine how AI 'hype' spreads Investigating how users internally negotiate the use of AI in their daily lives to design more contextually appropriate systems. Current approaches to understanding AI behavior are limited to short or few-shot interactions. We are building platforms and doing field work to understand how model behaviors like sycophancy and mimesis change in realistic, long-term interactions. The Workers Algorithm Observatory (WAO) is a inter-institutional collaboration focused on developing tools and doing research to support labor organizing and advocacy in the algorithmic age.
projects
Community LLM Adapters
Alternative Community-Driven Platforms
Algorithms as Labor Conditions: The Work of Content Creators
Tools for Crowdsourcing Platform Data
VR
AG
SD
Tracking and Evaluating AI Use in Police Surveillance
Mapping the AI Hype Cycle
How Users Internally Negotiate AI Use
Understanding Extended AI Interactions
The Workers Algorithm Observatory ↗
Recent publications from the Working Futures Lab. D Calacci, Varun Rao, Samantha Dalal, Catherine Di, Kok Wei Pua, Andrew Schwartz, Danny Spitzberg, Andrés Monroy-Hernandez Presents a tool designed with Colorado rideshare organizers to crowdsource hard-to-access driver pay and trip data, supporting policy advocacy and worker organizing. Varun Rao, Samantha Dalal, Andrew Schwartz, Amna Liaqat, D Calacci, Andrés Monroy-Hernandez Introduces a tool built with a rideshare union to help drivers estimate lost wages and build cases against arbitrary AI-driven deactivations. Shomik Jain, Charlotte Park, Matt Viana, Ashia Wilson, D Calacci Crowdsources two weeks of real-world AI conversations to study how extended interactions lead chatbots to mirror users' perspectives and become increasingly sycophantic. Frederick Reiber, Alishah Chator, D Calacci, Allison McDonald Investigates how digital platforms shape the formation, challenges, and consequences of labor organizing communities in the contemporary workplace. Frederick Reiber, Nathan Kim, Allison McDonald, D Calacci Freddy Reiber (BU) examines how employers weaponize digital technologies to suppress union organizing, drawing on three distinct cases to develop a preliminary model of digitally facilitated union busting.
publications
CHI
FairFare: A Tool for Crowdsourcing Rideshare Data to Empower Organizers ↗
CSCW
FareShare: A Tool for Labor Organizers to Estimate Lost Wages and Contest Arbitrary AI and Algorithmic Deactivations ↗
CHI
Interaction Context Often Increases Sycophancy in LLMs ↗
CSCW
Organizing in the Digital Age: Understanding Community, Challenges, and Consequences in Digitally Facilitated Labor Organizing
CHI
Surveillance, Spacing, Screaming and Scabbing: How Digital Technology Facilitates Union Busting
we combine empirical research, community engagement, and policy analysis to understand emerging technologies while building tools and frameworks to help workers and communities create futures that work for them.
people
area
leadership & staff
Caroline McLoughlin
she / her
Project Manager
Penn State ICDS
Clayton Colson
he / him
Research Engineer
Penn State ICDS
PhDs
Ankolika De
she / her
PhD Candidate
Penn State IST
Shomik Jain
he / him
PhD Candidate
MIT IDSS
Matt Viana
he / him
PhD Student
Penn State IST
undergraduate & masters students
AG
Ananya Gollakota
she / her
Undergraduate Researcher
Penn State IST
AR
Areea Rahman
she / her
Undergraduate Researcher
Penn State IST
MN
Maya Nagiub
she / her
Undergraduate Researcher
Penn State IST
VM
Varun Mani
he / him
Undergraduate Researcher
Penn State IST
affiliates & collaborators
HS
Harini Suresh
she / her
Affiliate
Asst. Professor, Brown University
BR
Becca Ricks
she / her
Affiliate
Data & Society
SD
Samantha Dalal
she / her
Affiliate
Postdoctoral Fellow, Princeton University CITP
VR
Varun Rao
he / him
Affiliate
PhD Candidate, Princeton University CITP
AV
Amal Vincent
he / him
Affiliate
University of Victoria
AZ
Angie Zhang
she / her
Affiliate
U.T. Austin