Marked by walkouts, strikes, petitions, and open letters, 2021 has been the biggest year yet for workers in the US video game industry taking a stand against labor conditions. Over the last year, a vocal contingent of video game workers has warned employers that they won't tolerate subpar labor conditions just to fulfill their childhood dream of making video games. "In my experience, it actually isn't suffering that drives people to take the risk and organize," says Tom Smith, senior director of organizing for the Communications Workers of America, the country's largest communications and media union. I think this is a moment in history in which both things are out there." On December 15, CWA helped form the US' first video game union at 13-person indie studio Vodeo Games--just two months after facilitating tabletop game publisher Paizo's unionization effort. Labor conditions in the games industry have been under scrutiny for nearly two decades. In the early 2000s, whistleblowers called attention to crunch, the practice of pulling 60- to 80-hour weeks ahead of game launches--a labor tactic that continues to this day. More recently, allegations of sexism and unequal treatment at top studios have roiled the industry. In 2018, current and former employees of League of Legends publisher Riot Games alleged that the company fostered a sexist "bro culture." At Ubisoft, in 2020 several employees alleged that the company was steeped in sexism and that executives and HR failed to adequately handle complaints of misconduct. And in 2021, California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing sued Activision Blizzard, alleging rampant sexism and a "pervasive frat boy workplace culture." In a statement to WIRED for this story, Activision spokesperson Kelvin Liu says, "There is no place at Activision Blizzard, or anywhere, for discrimination, harassment, or unequal treatment of any kind.

In June, TechCrunch Ethicist in Residence Greg M. Epstein attended EmTech Next, a conference organized by the MIT Technology Review. The conference, which took place at MIT's famous Media Lab, examined how AI and robotics are changing the future of work. Greg's essay, Will the Future of Work Be Ethical? reflects on his experiences at the conference, which produced what he calls "a religious crisis, despite the fact that I am not just a confirmed atheist but a professional one as well." In it, Greg explores themes of inequality, inclusion and what it means to work in technology ethically, within a capitalist system and market economy. Accompanying the story for Extra Crunch are a series of in-depth interviews Greg conducted around the conference, with scholars, journalists, founders and attendees. Below he speaks to two key organizers: Gideon Lichfield, the editor in chief of the MIT Technology Review, and Karen Hao, its artificial intelligence reporter.

BEIJING - Thirty years after the crackdown on Tiananmen protesters, the tanks that lined Beijing's central avenue have been replaced by countless surveillance cameras perched like hawks on lampposts to keep the population in check. The Chinese Communist Party has gone to great lengths to prevent another pro-democracy movement, clamping down on student activists, labor movements and lawyers with the help of high-tech surveillance. But the party has also pushed economic reforms that have made millions of people wealthier -- and less interested in rebelling like the students whose protest ended with hundreds killed on June 4, 1989. Over the past decade, small police booths have been set up block by block across the country to monitor neighborhood disputes, prevent crime, and keep tabs on anyone suspected of disturbing social order. Now China's obsession with artificial intelligence and facial recognition adds another layer of sophistication to this intricate surveillance web, allowing police to pound on the door of any perceived troublemaker, several activists have said.

The future of work in America is uncertain. What we know is that things are going to change. Technology will upend countless careers, workers across fields will be displaced, and it's not entirely clear how many jobs will be replaced. When driverless trucks are manufactured at scale, which will happen far sooner than many realize (as soon as five years), America's 3.5 million truck drivers will be suddenly dispensable. That doesn't mean that the profession of truck driving will disappear overnight, but it will shrink considerably.

During his 15 years as president of the Service Employees International Union, Andy Stern was a controversial figure. He suffered his share of criticism from inside and outside the union. There was, however, no disputing his success in making SEIU the largest and fastest growing union in the country and a powerful political machine that was instrumental in electing President Obama and getting the Affordable Care Act passed. During Stern's tenure as national organizing director and president, he introduced and implemented strategies of industry-wide organizing and bargaining to counter the changing reality of employers who were becoming large and international. He took SEIU out of the AFL-CIO and formed a new labor federation called Change to Win, because he felt the mainstream labor movement was too conservative about organizing and limited its power by refusing to consolidate smaller unions into bigger and more powerful ones.