Is AI training becoming 'modern-day slavery'?
BlackTechLogy: Kenyans explain the mental health toll while working at remote jobs focusing on artificial intelligence
“60 Minutes” interviewed African workers who are taking on the work of training artificial intelligence. (I’ll skip past my usual gripe of outsourcing work to everybody but U.S. employees — or doing this strange thing that Data Annotation is doing with filtering the type of person they’ll hire.) Focusing solely on AI, I’ve yet to understand the point of teaching artificial intelligence to do something that humans can already do instead of focusing on things we have been unable to do. Still waiting for a cure for cancer, HIV, sickle cell anemia and onward.
When the video started: My thoughts on AI work in Nairobi
I wasn’t prepared for one of the “60 Minutes” Kenyan interviewees to describe training AI as “modern-day slavery.” I have a bone to pick with people using this term while being paid — regardless of it being low pay. If you didn’t go through what actual enslaved people went through, find another way to describe it. Enslaved people didn’t have weekly contracts or monthly contracts. They were tortured, killed, kidnapped and raped their entire lives — while still being required to work from sun up to sun down. You didn’t get KFC and a paycheck for a job well done (no matter how dumb that catering suggestion was).
I skipped past her talking altogether and moved on to what the other Humans In the Loop workers are actually doing with artificial intelligence and found it — memorable. It is absolutely reasonable to complain about $2-$3 per hour when the Data Labeler’s agreement was $12.50 per hour, per worker for an average of 665.28 hours per month. That’s easily $8,316 per month and $99,792. All of their financial points are valid.
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When the video ended: My thoughts on AI work in Nairobi
I know what kind of toll it takes on a person to see, hear or read about nonstop violence to filter what you can and cannot publish, just from working in several newsrooms. I definitely didn’t have to look at photos of dismembered bodies like Humans In the Loop contractors did though. That’s insane. Regardless of the employer (Meta, ChatGPT, Sama, OpenAI, Scale AI), this is atrocious if true.
While I normally would’ve at least half-smiled at “bedroom fireworks,” the Nairobian contractor saying all the videos of rape made him “hate sex” started making me want to delete my slavery comment above. The things these Humans In the Loop contractors went through sounded like it took a kind of mental and physical toll on them even though they were not harmed in a visual way.
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I now wonder if African workers were chosen to avoid U.S. workers speaking up for the kind of day-to-day work they’d be subjected to. And then finding out that they would do all the work and not be paid really made me want to delete my rant above. I’m leaving it there for those who use the “modern-day slavery” phrase casually, but I’ll be damned if the red-haired lady wasn’t more on point than I initially gave her credit for.
Sadly, it sounds like once this work is done — underpaid and psychologically drained — all the humans doing it will be dismissed. I see “train AI” jobs all the time. You can’t get through more than a couple of pages on LinkedIn without a “train AI career” job post popping up. After seeing how these Nairobians were treated, I’m looking at this entire industry in tech differently.
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