Varun Nagaraj Rao will present his General Exam " Studying the Societal Impacts of AI on Labor " on Wednesday, May 15, 2024 at 3:00 PM in Sherrerd 008 and via zoom. Zoom link: https://princeton.zoom.us/j/97776899839 Committee Members: Andrés Monroy-Hernández (advisor), Arvind Narayanan , Peter Henderson Abstract: AI systems are increasingly mediating interactions on digital labor marketplaces, reshaping the nature of work and impacting billions of lives through opaque decisions. In this talk, I will explore the societal impact of AI on labor through the lens of rideshare and social media job ads. In the case of rideshare, through a unique mixed methods study design blending worker interviews with large scale LLM-assisted analysis of over 1 million driver comments on Reddit, we thickly characterize transparency-related harms, mitigation strategies, and worker needs. Motivated by our findings we propose an outline of the first rideshare transparency report. In the case of job ads on social media, our analysis of the Facebook Ad Library reveals a new form of discrimination through the selective use of demographic-specific images in job ads, affecting applicant demographics and reinforced by the ad delivery algorithm. Taken together, my research shows that AI-mediated platforms substantially shape job access for many through opaque, centralized decision-making which restricts user agency. Policy solutions mandating greater transparency may help with the decentralization of some platform power. Reading List: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QQxG67c8qGV0rj1KRABONK8IJTY6emAECBUC8EAM... Everyone is invited to attend the talk, and those faculty wishing to remain for the oral exam following are welcome to do so.