What is AI Doing to Job Quality? Platformization, Fissured Workplaces and Dispersion

Debates about AI and labour are focused on job losses, yet give little consideration to how this technology affects actual working experiences. This chapter examines the impact of AI on job quality through its use and through the invisibilized labour that sustains it, using the framework of the European Job Quality Index. AI deployment often intensifies work, increases surveillance and limits worker autonomy, while its production relies on a highly stratified global workforce of engineers and hidden data workers. These arrangements have resulted in companies outsourcing functions while maintaining control over production in what is known as a ‘fissured workplace’. Furthermore, AI-driven workplaces are creating a ‘regime of dispersion’ where workers juggle numerous fragmented tasks. The chapter explores these phenomena, correlated as they are in terms of AI and job quality, while identifying the research agenda and policy implications that would safeguard all users in AI's global supply chains.