From Automation to Algorithmic governance.

How can historians best contribute to the present debate on AI and the increasing influence of algorithms on our daily (working) lifes? Starting from this question the talk will focus on technology-induced changes in the workplace from the 1970s onwards with the International Labour Organization (ILO) and its attempts to globalize its activities on
working conditions through its International Program for the Improvement of Working Conditions (PIACT, 1976) as the point of departure. It will connect these activities to broader and longer-term debates on control and resistance, on alienation and democratic participation in the work place and to the concept of quality of working life more generally.
In the end the presentation will make an attempt to relate these debates of the last five decades from a historian’s
point of view to our present moment, defined by what some authors have called the age of “surveillance capitalism” of “cyberbosses” and accelerating algorithmic governance in workplaces around the globe.

Bio: Daniel Roger Maul is a Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Oslo (Norway). His main research fields comprise the “global social policy” in the broadest sense, with a particular emphasis on the history of humanitarian aid, internationalism and international organizations. His newest book publications include "The International Labour Organization: 100 Years of Global Social Policy" (2019); "The Politics of Service: American Quakers and international humanitarian relief 1917-1945" (2024).