Episode 28

The Politics of Open Access, Alzheimer’s Research, and Ghost Work ft. Mary Gray

September 13, 2022

TRANSCRIPT

It's a new season of The Received Wisdom!! After their partial summer hiatus, Shobita and Jack discuss the fraud allegations that are rocking the foundations of what we know about Alzheimer's Disease, and the Biden Administration's directive to make freely available all publications based on federally funded research. And, they chat with Macarthur Fellow Mary Gray about the "ghost workers" behind digital technologies and supposedly artificial intelligence. Gray is Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, Faculty Associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, and faculty in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering with affiliations in Anthropology and Gender Studies at Indiana University.

Study Questions:

1. Why was the amyloid plaque hypothesis for Alzheimer's so successful?

2. What are the potential drawbacks and limitations to the US government's adoption of an open access publication policy?

3. What is ghost work?

4. Why can't the problem of content moderation be solved solely through computation, and more generally computer science and engineering? What insights can deep understanding of the social dimensions of science and technology provide?

5. What don't we think of ghost workers as experts? How might reframing it in that way change the discussion? What public policy options might it reveal?

6. How do Gray and Suri categorize different types of ghost work?

Related links:

• Charles Piller (2022). "Blots on a Field?" Science. July 21.

• The White House (2022). "Breakthroughs for All: Delivering Equitable Access to America’s Research." OSTP Blog. August 25.

• Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri (2019). Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a Global Underclass. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

• National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (2022). Fostering Responsible Computing Research: Foundations and Practices. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

• Mary L. Gray with Catherine Powell (2021). "The Emerging Technology Underclass." Council on Foreign Relations’ Women and Foreign Policy Roundtable Series and Roundtable Series on Cybersecurity and Cyberconflict.

• Margaret Bourdeaux, Mary L. Gray, and Barbara Grosz (2020). "How human-centered tech can beat COVID-19 through contact tracing." The Hill. April 20.