Miguel Afonso Caetano on Nostr: #AI #Fauxtomation #GhostWork: "AI’s development so far has been based on the ...

#AI #Fauxtomation #GhostWork: "AI’s development so far has been based on the exploitation of workers and users around the world, performing what anthropologist Mary L. Gray and computational social scientist Siddharth Suri call ghost work. This term refers to the undervalued human labor utilized to develop and maintain the automation of websites and apps. Ghost work is characterized by on-demand, short-term projects or tasks performed globally by precarized workers through platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk and specialized companies like Sama. These workers, usually vulnerable people from Asia, Latin America, and Africa, are paid less than $2 per hour to generate and label data that trains AI models. Moreover, users who validate algorithmic outputs or help perfect systems usually do it for free. Ghost work is often outsourced, hidden, or rendered invisible by the tech companies who request it. As Noopur Raval argues, we must ask ourselves how and for whom this work is invisible and what happens when workers are finally seen. In light of these questions, we delve into three nuanced layers of invisibility that pervade data work: the unpaid work performed by users, human workers pretending to be AI systems, and the different forms of exploitation of vulnerable communities globally. Finally, we explore potential avenues for not only rendering this labor visible but also transforming the material conditions under which it takes place."

https://just-tech.ssrc.org/articles/data-work-and-its-layers-of-invisibility/