I am an Assistant Professor of American Studies at Yale University and a Just Tech Fellow at the Social Science Research Council. My research centers on the social and cultural dimensions of information, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between labor and the development of artificial intelligence.
My book, Platform Extractivism: Data Work and the People Powering Artificial Intelligence (University of California Press, October 2026), argues that the labor underpinning artificial intelligence is organized through a form of “platform extractivism” that exploits economic instability to capture value from precarious populations. The book reframes AI data work as a continuation of historical extractive relations, offering a critical intervention into debates on the future of work and the costs concealed behind digital platforms.
My academic articles have been published in journals including Big Data & Society, Information, Communication & Society, Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, and the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction. My research and commentary have appeared in media outlets including The Economist, Fortune, WIRED, the MIT Tech Review, and NBC. My research has been supported by the International Development Research Centre and the Social Science Research Council, with funding from the McArthur, Ford, and Surdna foundations.
I hold a Ph.D. in Information Science from the University of Toronto and have held visiting appointments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Weizenbaum Institute. I am a fluent speaker of Spanish, French, and English.
Ph.D. in Information Science, 2022
University of Toronto
Master's degree in Sociology, 2018
School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences
Maîtrise degree in the Humanities, 2016
Sorbonne University

Concealed behind digital platforms, a vast, dispersed, and largely invisible workforce quietly generates and annotates the data that powers today’s AI boom. In Platform Extractivism, information scientist Julián Posada argues that these platforms are engines of extraction rooted in the enduring social inequalities and transnational power disparities of coloniality. Posada reveals that technology, especially today’s so-called AI, is not merely artificial, autonomous, or intelligent; it inherently relies on and extracts from humanity. Drawing on mixed-methods research on three platforms in the Venezuelan data work sector, Posada exposes the human cost of this technology, revealing how digital platforms have capitalized on economic instability, targeting vulnerable populations to extract value from their precarious labor. A critical intervention in the debate on the future of work, this book provides profound insight into the implications of artificial intelligence, moving beyond the context of advanced economies to focus on the labor involved in its production. Posada questions whether AI is a tool for freedom, or an engine for widening the gap between the unseen workers who teach machines, and the corporations that profit from them.