Spatial Computing - Catherine Griffiths - Labor Optics

Labor Optics

Catherine Griffiths

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Catherine Griffiths, Labor Optics, 2024-ongoing.
Spatial Computing
October 2025










Notes
1

Jin Young Hwang. “Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: Examining Moral Accountability in Autonomous Decision-Making Systems.” World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews 23, no. 3 (2024): 3192–98.

2

“Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction,” University of Cambridge, accessed February 8, 2025, ; “PI: A Smart Construction Quality Management System,” Hong Kong Polytechnic University, accessed February 8, 2025, ; “S.M.A.R.T. Construction Research Group,” NYU Abu Dhabi, accessed February 8, 2025, ; “What is CIFE?,” Stanford Engineering Center for Integrated Facility Engineering, accessed February 8, 2025, .

3

Nextera Robotics was originally founded at MIT in Boston before moving into privatization. “DIDGE: The Next Era in Construction Site Management,” Nextera Robotics, accessed February 8, 2025, . Oculai was incubated at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany before receiving private seed funding. Oculai website, accessed February 8, 2025, .

4

Justyna Patalas-Maliszewska et al., “An Automated Recognition of Work Activity in Industrial Manufacturing Using Convolutional Neural Networks,” Electronics 10, no. 23 (2021): 2946.

5

Sakorn Mekruksavanich and Anuchit Jitpattanakul, “Automatic Recognition of Construction Worker Activities Using Deep Learning Approaches and Wearable Inertial Sensors,” Intelligent Automation & Soft Computing 36, no. 2 (2023): 2111–28.

6

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016).

7

Frank B. Gilbreth, Motion Study: A Method for Increasing Efficiency (New York: Sturgis & Walton Company, 1917); Original Films of Frank B. Gilbreth, directed by Frank B. Gilbreth in collboratiion with Lillian M. Gilbreth and Ralph M. Barnes (James S. Perkins, undated), available to view here: .

8

The Gilbreth concept of the “therblig,” a basic motion element in manual work, can be seen in the process of building structured datasets that combine short video clips and data labels in contemporary worker activity recognition. David Ferguson, “Therbligs: The Keys to Simplifying Work,” The Gilbreth Network, accessed February 8, 2025, .

9

The US Department of Labor recently issued a field assistance bulletin on the application of AI in workplaces highlighting the risk of wage theft. Kyle D. Winnick and Howard M. Wexler, “DOL Issues Guidance on Wage-Hour Risk Posed by Artificial Intelligence,” Employment Law Lookout: Insights for Management (blog), Seyfarth Shaw LLP, May 3, 2024, .

10

Noortje Marres and David Stark, “Put to the Test: For a New Sociology of Testing.” The British Journal of Sociology 71, no. 3 (2020): 423–43.

11

Xiaochun Luo et al., “Towards Efficient and Objective Work Sampling: Recognizing Workers’ Activities in Site Surveillance Videos with Two-Stream Convolutional Networks,” Automation in Construction 94 (2018): 360–70.

12

“The future of industrial safety: Worker-Centric AI™,” Everguard, accessed March 25, 2025, .

13

Colin Lecher, “How Amazon Automatically Tracks and Fires Warehouse Workers for ‘Productivity.’” The Verge, April 25, 2019, .

14

According to the sociologist A. Aneesh, algocracy is a form of algorithmic governance in which algorithms can be designed to covertly shape behaviors and bypass traditional forms of governance. Aneesh, A. Virtual Migration: The Programming of Globalization (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).

15

Catherine Griffiths, “Toward Counteralgorithms: The Contestation of Interpretability in Machine Learning” (PhD diss., University of Southern California, 2022).

16

Tim Miller, “Explanation in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Social Sciences.” Artificial Intelligence 267 (February 2019): 1–38.

17

Catherine Griffiths, “Unmodelled: In the Blindspot of AI Infrastructure.” Gradient Journal 3 (2023), .







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