The Economics of Ghost Work: How Your Automation Is More Human Than You Think

The robots are here—but someone still has to clean up their mess.

A few weeks ago, I chatted with a founder who automated 90% of his customer support with AI. “It’s incredible,” he said. “The chatbot answers everything. We barely need a team anymore.”

“Barely,” huh?

What he didn’t know—what most people don’t know—is that behind every seamless automation, there’s an invisible army of human workers making sure the whole thing doesn’t fall apart.

AI isn’t as independent as we like to think, and the more we automate, the more hidden labor we create. Welcome to the economy of Ghost Work.

The Hidden Workforce Keeping AI Afloat

Automation is supposed to eliminate human labor.

In reality? It often just buries it.

“Ghost Work” refers to the thousands of people quietly training AI, reviewing flagged content, and fixing the endless stream of mistakes automation leaves behind.

They don’t get employee benefits, they don’t get recognized, and they definitely don’t get credit for keeping AI from making a fool of itself.

Consider this:

• Amazon’s Mechanical Turk employs wor…