Digital Labor: Challenges, Ethical Insights, and Implications

Abstract: Digital workers on crowdsourcing platforms (e.g., Amazon Mechanical Turk, Appen, Clickworker, Prolific) play a crucial role in training and improving AI systems, yet they often face low pay, unfair conditions, and a lack of recognition for their contributions. To map these issues in the existing literature of computer science, AI, and related scholarship, we selected over 300 research papers on digital labor published between 2015 and 2024, narrowing them down to 143 on digital gig-labor for a detailed analysis. This analysis provides a broad overview of the key challenges, concerns, and trends in the field. Our synthesis reveals how the persistent patterns of representation and voices of gig workers in digital labor are structured and governed. We offer new insights for researchers, platform designers, and policymakers, helping them better understand the experiences of digital workers and pointing to key areas where interventions and future investigations are promptly needed. By mapping the findings from the past ten years' growth of the domain and possible implications, this paper contributes to a more coherent and critical understanding of digital labor in contemporary and future AI ecosystems.