close share links Artificial intelligence is often framed in terms of headline-grabbing technology and dazzling promise. But some of the workers who enable these programs — the people who do things like code data, flag pictures, or work to integrate the programs into the workplace — are often overlooked or undervalued. “This is a common pattern in the social studies of technology,” said Madeleine Clare Elish, SM ’10, a senior research scientist at Google. “A focus on new technology, the latest innovation, comes at the expense of the humans who are working to actually allow that innovation to function in the real world."