2025/06/08 by Samantha Shorey, Estefania Rodriguez · 1 voice · 3 citations
Social Sciences · #Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
paper · doi:10.1080/21670811.2025.2513411
openalex publication_date 2025/06/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/22
The Covid-19 pandemic brought renewed attention to how Artificial Intelligence might be used to address the everyday challenges of low-wage work now deemed “essential.” In this paper, we perform an exhaustive analysis of local and national U.S. news reports about automation, robotics, and AI in the recycling sorting industry over the last 10 years (2014–2024). Workers’ efforts to sustain operations of this critical sector during the pandemic occurred within a context of media hype that presented AI as a solution to the public health crisis—in addition to the problems of contamination and labor costs that had concerned the industry for years. Our analysis reveals that the discourses around automation and AI are qualitatively different: moving from claims about efficiency to claims about accuracy with a diminished discussion of technology’s fallibility. Technology company executives only appear as sources when AI is introduced to the industry. Throughout our dataset, the perspective of workers was almost entirely absent, and no recycling sorters were quoted as sources. In response, we advocate for the practice of solidarity journalism in new stories about workplace automation and call for workers inclusion in public dialogues about the impact and future of AI.