WE ARE GHOST WORKERS

Project Author: Ajša Mara Kacjan

The project We are Ghost Workers was developed within the courses Application Lab and Machine Learning for Artists at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and was first presented on June 11, 2025, at the university. A research paper titled We are Ghost Workers: Microwork and Digital Resistance was also produced alongside the project.

The project is dedicated to all workers who perform online tasks to train artificial intelligence or moderate digital spaces, where this work is often disguised as automated and autonomous. The focus is on the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform which has been exploiting workers for almost two decades offering them miserable pay with no real intent to improve their working conditions. Using machine learning and creative writing as a form of resistance the art project follows the research paper and merges social justice, AI practices, and artistic strategies. A user interface, developed using Mediapipe, allows users to transform selected parts of the research text into a critical letter addressed to Jeff Bezos—and send it.

The project was inspired by a 2014 campaign in which workers wrote letters to Jeff Bezos, organized by the now-inactive platform We are Dynamo. This platform remains a crucial reference in exposing the mystification, fetishization, and commercialization of artificial intelligence.

Ajša Mara Kacjan is a visual and intermedia artist from Maribor currently active in Rotterdam where she is completing her studies in Transformational Design at the Willem de Kooning Academy. She is currently on an exchange at the University of Applied Arts in Vienn, in the Cross-Disciplinary Strategies program. Her practice combines performance, technology, and social critique with a particular emphasis on political emancipation and the intertwining of the digital and analog worlds. With an interest in pop culture and archival research, she creates works that critically address the impact of the digital world on both human and non-human species. She has exhibited in group shows at Buitenplaats Brienenoord (Folkloresque, 2024), Zuid Boijmans Van Beuningen (Era of Coming Apart, 2023), participated in the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2024 and Movies that Matter 2023. In 2024 and 2025 she co-designed the program for the International Homeless Day in Rotterdam and volunteered at Pauluskerk. She also participated in the project The Spit created using augmented reality (AR) in Vienna’s Postsparkasse commemorating Austrian artist and professor Peter Weibel.