Benjamin Shestakofsky
Assistant Professor of Information Science, Cornell University
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About Benjamin
Shestakofsky's research centers on the relationship between work, technology, organizations, and political economy in the age of AI.
Contributions
In the News
Quoted by Zachary Schermele in "The ACT's New Ties to a Private Equity Firm are Raising Eyebrows," USA Today, June 24, 2024.
Opinion: "Are These Silicon Valley Power Players the Heroes or Villains of Tech?," Benjamin Shestakofsky, San Francisco Chronicle, June 13, 2024.
Research discussed by , in "In the Corporate World, Woke is the Rage but Greed is Still King," The New York Times, May 16, 2024.
Quoted by Libby Denkmann and Alec Cowan in "Is Amazon's 'Just Walk Out' Technology Powered by AI or by Hundreds of Underpaid Workers in India?," KUOW, April 10, 2024.
Research discussed by , in "The Future is Automated. Here's How We Can Prepare For It," World Economic Forum, January 17, 2017.
Research discussed by , in "How Robots Are Making Humans Indispensable," Financial Times, December 22, 2016.
Publications
Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality (University of California Press, 2024).
Presents a systematic analysis of everyday life inside a tech startup, dissecting the logic of venture capital and its consequences for entrepreneurs, workers, and societies.
"Working Algorithms: Software Automation and the Future of Work" Work and Occupations 44, no. 4 (2017): 376-423.
Finds two forms of human-software complementarity: computational labor that supports or stands in for software algorithms and emotional labor aimed at helping users adapt to software systems. Suggests how the dynamism of the organizations in which software algorithms are produced and implemented will contribute to labor's enduring relevance in the digital age.