The core shift isn’t just automation, it’s the transfer of decision-making power
from labor to the platform. When the algorithm becomes the supervisor, the worker
is no longer negotiating with a human institution, they are negotiating with an
opaque optimization function.
This is why many gig workers describe the job not as “work” but as a kind of
ongoing test they can never see the scoring rules for.
The result isn’t just efficiency. It’s dependency.