Artificial Intelligence, Labor Identity, and the Moral Economy of Work: A Comparative Social Humanities Analysis of Platform Workers and Creative Professionals in the United States and Japan

Abstract

Artificial intelligence is transforming contemporary work not only by automating tasks but by reshaping labor identity, professional value, institutional trust, and the moral economy of employment. This article compares the social implications of AI-mediated labor in the United States and Japan, focusing on two analytical dimensions: platform work and creative-professional work. The United States represents a liberal market context in which AI is closely tied to platform capitalism, labor flexibilization, algorithmic management, and entrepreneurial individualism. Japan represents a coordinated institutional context shaped by long-standing norms of organizational loyalty, demographic aging, technological modernization, and cautious regulatory adaptation. Drawing on sociology of work, digital labor studies, cultural theory, political economy, and ethics of technology, this article argues that AI transforms labor through three interrelated mechanisms: algorithmic valuation, occupational identity disruption, and institutional responsibility displacement. The findings demonstrate that workers experience AI not merely as technological change but as a reorganization of recognition, autonomy, skill, and social worth. Platform workers face intensified surveillance and fragmented bargaining capacity, while creative professionals confront new anxieties over authorship, originality, and cultural value. The article contributes to social humanities scholarship by developing a comparative framework linking AI labor systems, moral economy, identity formation, and democratic regulation of technological change.