Sweeping Up Digital Dirt: Navigating Immediate Working Experiences to Alleviate the Precarity of Online Crowd Work Conditions

The increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems across sectors relies on online crowd work to generate, label, and curate the large datasets required for AI functionality. However, this form of labor is frequently conducted under precarious and ethically contentious conditions. While these systemic issues have received scholarly attention, little empirical research explores their psychological impact on workers. This study applies the Psychology of Working Theory (PWT) to examine how the satisfaction of core psychological needs, i.e., autonomy and belongingness, shapes work enjoyment and frustration among 1,291 European crowd workers engaged in such AI-related tasks. Findings indicate that autonomy and belongingness play a critical role in fostering positive crowd work experiences and enabling psychological resilience in the face of adverse conditions. This research contributes to understanding how AI is reshaping labor and offers theoretical and practical guidance for the ethical and human-centered design of AI-supported work systems