Stories from the AI Underclass

With Lurking, cultural critic and writer Joanne McNeil flipped the script, telling the story of the internet not from the perspective of its creators but from the perspective of those who inhabited it, explaining how we all become ‘users’. She’s since branched out into fiction: her caustic debut novel Wrong Way skewers venture capitalism, AI and ‘disruptive’ start-ups. 

At Sónar+D, this prolific writer and critic – her bylines include Frieze, the Los Angeles Times, Wired, and the Boston Globe – turns her gaze onto society’s fascination with AI’s ability to reshape work as we know it. Together with visuals, created specially for the piece by ‘digital archeology’ studio Estampa, she’ll show how tools designed to make life easier are benefitting from uncosted labour, contributing to work becoming increasingly alienating for a huge part of the global population.