Welcome to the Digital Labor Lab Podcast, where we explore the future of work, automation, AI, and the evolving role of digital labor in our economy. In this inaugural episode, hosts Brad Owens and Jennifer Owens discuss:
- What digital labor really means – is it just robots?
- Why this topic is more relevant than ever in today’s economy
- Insights from industry leaders, including a key takeaway from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff
- How digital labor is transforming industries like healthcare, supply chains, and HR
- What to expect from future episodes!
Join us as we dive into the ethics, challenges, and opportunities surrounding digital labor. Whether you’re an employer, employee, or just curious about how work is changing, this podcast is your guide!
Watch the full episode:
AI Generated Full Transcript:
Brad Owens (00:00)
Hey Jenny, what’s digital labor?
Jennifer Owens (00:02)
feeling it’s more than just robots. Can we discuss?
Brad Owens (00:15)
Hey everyone and welcome into the Digital Labor Lab where we explore the future of work one experiment at a time. I’m Brad Owens.
Jennifer Owens (00:22)
I’m Jenny Owens, and together we are your hosts. Welcome to our inaugural episode of the Digital Labor Lab. In this episode, we’re going to talk about what is digital labor, why we’re talking about it, and what you can expect from us as we continue our podcast episodes. So without further ado, guess, Brad, can we talk about what is digital labor? Is it just robots, or is there more to it?
Brad Owens (00:44)
Yeah, so digital labor can span a ton here. So for the audience, yes, we get it. This could encompass a ton of different things. But what we want to focus on here is just this next wave of how we’re going to work. Yes, there could be some automations involved. Yes, there could be handing off a portion of your business to some sort of automated AI agent or whatever you may want to call it. But
This is simply just the future of work where we focus on more digital types of workers for your business.
Jennifer Owens (01:19)
whether that digital is truly in the cloud or whether that’s digital made concrete through an actual physical robot, right? I’m thinking about the automation in automotive plants. I’m thinking about the robots that carry supply chain stuff. So if you’ve got like a large physical campus and you need to get supplies from one place to another, you may have robots that are doing that in response to supply chain software. So they’re being responsive to the real time needs of your stocking needs. I’m also thinking about
Brad, can we talk a little bit about why is it that we’re talking about digital labor right now? What is it about our current economic setup that’s making digital labor feel like such a hot topic?
Brad Owens (01:59)
You know, it’s really interesting because at a recent conference, the World Economic Forum that was held in Davos, we had a lot of the biggest names in tech, in business, in really thinking about the future. They were all in the same place together. And a few choice quotes came out of those different panels. One of which Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff had mentioned that, hey, everyone on the panel
Do you realize that we may be the last leaders to only lead humans? And everyone kind of gave him a look of like, what? So what he was getting at and
He went on to explain that in the very near future, the workforce will no longer be just humans. It will also be humans augmented by digital labor. And he started going very deep down that path of how are we actually set up to manage digital labor? It was very, very interesting.
Jennifer Owens (03:00)
So this is really interesting to me. And it’s interesting because it’s where it intersects with my day job. So for those of you who don’t know me, I work in artificial intelligence at Cleveland Clinic. For the purposes of this podcast, all opinions and thought here, this is representative of me personally, not a representative of my employer. But I spent a lot of time thinking about the role of artificial intelligence in the health care landscape.
what work truly can be automated? Where can artificial intelligence really be autonomous, right? When we’re starting to think about agentic AI, we’re starting to think about what workflows do we trust to turn over to technology alone with human oversight and human quality control versus what workflows do we really feel like, nope, gotta have a human involved in 100 % of those tasks. So this is really fascinating to me. And you mentioned Mark Benioff of Salesforce and I think it might be helpful for you to explain, hey, what is your background here? Why are you interested in this topic?
Brad Owens (03:55)
Sure. So I come from the world of HR and staffing and recruiting, and I typically look at an organization and try and think about how it’s running and why. When you think about human resources, you think about literally what is it taking to run your business. And up until now, that has all been people, but that is completely changing. And in my day job, we’re actually taking advantage of software by the likes of Salesforce to be able to help businesses
right now with this digital labor. We’re giving them, whether it’s augmenting just pieces of their business process right now, or it’s fully automating an entire process from their business on this platform through agentic AI or other means, we’re truly helping people start down this journey. And I’m noticing that there are a lot of different people that
One, have absolutely no idea what this is all about. Two, what it’s capable of. Or three, if they’re even ready for it. So we don’t know the answers to that. And the good news is no one knows the answer to that. So when I was talking with Jenny, we went, you know what? With our powers combined, we would make a pretty interesting show around all of this type of information. And that’s a digital labor.
Jennifer Owens (05:11)
Yeah, so on the show and in subsequent episodes, we’re going to dive into a history of the labor market and how changes in industrialization and in automation have affected the labor market to date and what we can expect from digital labor’s entry into the marketplace in its first real meaningful sort of scale. We’re going to talk about how to determine whether your business is ready for digital labor, how you can manage a hybrid human and digital workforce.
We’re going to talk about the ethics of using digital labor. We’re also going to step back a little bit from the labor payment paradigm, because we often think about labor as something which is exchanged for money. But there’s a lot of ways in which labor is powering our economy that aren’t paid, thinking about volunteer labor, thinking about the kind of labor that it takes to run a household. So there’s all kinds of labor that can be digitized, and bits and pieces of all these workflows can be digitized as well. We’re going to talk about that.
We’re going to talk about the effects of digital labor on your human workforce and vice versa, and how you can, if you’re an employee, how you can use these tools to make yourself a more valuable prospect to an employer or to start your own business. There’s so much to cover. I don’t think we’re ever going to run out of topics.
Brad Owens (06:22)
Right, and so in doing that, we need to dig into the people, the ideas, the tech, what’s truly behind this, what’s making it work, what is pushing this space forward, how are businesses actually using this? So it’s not just gonna be us jabbering in your ear for a half hour once a week, we’re truly gonna bring on the people that are involved in this. We’re gonna talk to the people from.
Large management consulting agencies that have been helping businesses through these types of transitions. We’re to be bringing in the people that are responsible for the tech that’s making these changes. We’re going to bring in people that understand the agentic AI frameworks, the actual platforms that make this happen. We’re going to be talking to you about the research, talking to you about what’s out there so that this digital labor lab will truly act as your foundation of, Hey, if I just need to understand something at a basic level.
or I need to understand where this is going so that my business doesn’t fall behind, this digital labor lab show will be a fantastic guide
Jennifer Owens (07:20)
Yeah, absolutely. And so if you’re looking for resources, for references, for back archives of the show, where are we gonna have that, Brad?
Brad Owens (07:29)
Right? So all of that is the home for this will be at digital labor lab.com. That’s going to be the hub. but that’s not the only place you are probably listening to this not on digital labor lab.com. we’re going to have the podcast on Spotify. It’ll be on YouTube. It’ll be on Apple podcasts. It’ll be wherever good podcasts are sold.
and it’ll also be all across social media. If you will follow us on LinkedIn, we’ll absolutely bombard you with content. If you wanted to be out there on X, if you want to be on Blue Sky, we’re going to make sure that this is available where you are so you don’t have to go somewhere special to consume this.
Jennifer Owens (08:01)
So come along with us on this journey as we explore and discover together. We’re gonna experiment, we’re gonna learn, we’re gonna find experts, we’re gonna bring everything together in one place. I’m so excited to have you join us.
Brad Owens (08:11)
Until next time, make sure you subscribe wherever you are currently listening to or watching this episode, because we will be back with plenty of other episodes and hope you’ll join us on this journey of the digital labor lab.