The future of crowd work

Aniket Kittur, Jeffrey V. Nickerson, Michael S. Bernstein, Elizabeth M. Gerber, Aaron Shaw, John Zimmerman, Matthew Lease, John J. Horton

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

863 Scopus citations

Abstract

Paid crowd work offers remarkable opportunities for improving productivity, social mobility, and the global economy by engaging a geographically distributed workforce to complete complex tasks on demand and at scale. But it is also possible that crowd work will fail to achieve its potential, focusing on assembly-line piecework. Can we foresee a future crowd workplace in which we would want our children to participate? This paper frames the major challenges that stand in the way of this goal. Drawing on theory from organizational behavior and distributed computing, as well as direct feedback from workers, we outline a framework that will enable crowd work that is complex, collaborative, and sustainable. The framework lays out research challenges in twelve major areas: workflow, task assignment, hierarchy, real-time response, synchronous collaboration, quality control, crowds guiding AIs, AIs guiding crowds, platforms, job design, reputation, and motivation.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCSCW 2013 - Proceedings of the 2013 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work
Pages1301-1317
Number of pages17
DOIs
StatePublished - 2013
Event2013 2nd ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW 2013 - San Antonio, TX, United States
Duration: 23 Feb 201327 Feb 2013

Publication series

NameProceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW

Conference

Conference2013 2nd ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW 2013
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySan Antonio, TX
Period23/02/1327/02/13

Keywords

  • Crowd work
  • Crowdsourcing
  • Organization design
  • Research vision

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