Generative AI’s Impact on Creative Labor in East Asian Urban Contexts
The project examines how generative AI is reshaping labor processes in the creative and cultural industries of East Asia’s largest metropolises, such as Seoul, Taipei, and Tokyo. Theoretically, drawing on critical AI studies, the project examines how technological innovation driven by big tech companies intensifies the precariousness of human work, particularly creative and cultural work. Employing an inter-thematic framework spanning AI automation, labor processes, power dynamics, and data rights, the project combines survey data with in-depth interviews of artists and creative professionals conducted in Taipei and Seoul. The project’s ultimate aim is to publish a comprehensive issue report on AI and creative working conditions, as well as a peer-reviewed academic article. Both publications will illuminate the impact of generative AI on cognitive and creative labor in East Asian contexts.
References:
- Andrejevic, Mark (2020). Automated media. London: Taylor & Francis.
- Dyer-Witheford, Nick, Atle Mikkola Kjosen & James Steinhoff. (2019). Inhuman power: Artificial intelligence and the future of capitalism. London, UK: Pluto Press.
- Muldoon, James, Mark Graham & Callum Cant. (2024) Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labor Powering A.I., Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024.
Main Research Topics
- Critical Studies of technology
- Techno-ecologies
- Platform studies, AI automation and labor,
- the technological development in East Asian states
Curriculum Vitae
- Editor-in-Chief (Jan 2019 ~ present), Culture/Science, Quarterly Journal of Cultural theories.
- Editorial Board member (Jan 2017 ~ present), Journal of Internet Histories: Digital Technology, Culture & Society
- Taiwan Fellowship Fellow (February ~ April 2025), National Taiwanese Normal University, Sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Taiwan
- Short-term Visiting Fellow (November ~ December 2024), Rykkyo University, Tokyo, Japan
- Visiting Scholar (July 2017 ~ June 2018), Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA
Publications and Presentations
Peer-reviewed Journal articles:
- Lee, K-S. (2024). The Technopolitics of Civic Engagement: Designing an AI index for Human Rights and the Right to Life. (In Korean) Culture and Politics. 11(1): 5-42. ISSN: 2289-0637
- Lee, K-S. (2023). Forming a Korean-style Platformized Techno-society under Yoke. (In Korean) Economy & Society 139: 14-51, 10.18207/criso.2023.139.14
- Lee, K-S. (2021). Between the developmental state and popular nationalism: the pure Hangul movement in the early history of the Korean internet, Internet Histories, 5(2): 248-67. DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2021.1951960
- Lee, K-S. (2016). On the historiography of the Korean Internet: Issues raised by the historical dialectic of structure and agency. Information Society. 32(3): 217-222.
Recent edited book:
- Lee, K-S. (2023). AI automation? The proliferation of precarious labour relying on platforms. (pp.51-94). in Lee, K-S (ed.), AI, Platform and the Future of Work, Seoul: Ppalgansogeum, ISBN 979-11-91383-37-9