Brown student maps the hidden global labor chain behind AI
Brown student maps the hidden global labor powering AI
A Brown University senior has built a map tracing how AI data labeling flows from 13 outsourcing firms and 141 corporate clients to worker sites in 31 countries, many in the Global South. She calls the arrangement "AI colonialism": low-paid workers in Kenya, Indonesia, and Colombia screen violent and abusive content so Western AI systems can be trained to be safe. She hopes the map becomes a public education tool and, eventually, a way for dispersed workers to find one another.
You have folks around the world who have to read paragraph after paragraph of AI-produced child pornography, bestiality, violent content or whatever else, just to try to train AI to be safe.