Like steelworkers, data workers worldwide deserve safe, humane working environments, fair pay, and recognition of how their human intelligence contributes to AI
Men and women like your father built our country, and no matter how much we immerse ourselves in the Metaverse, we will always need infrastructure. And just as steel built the modern world—bridges, skyscrapers, railways —data is creating the digital world—models, algorithms, intelligent systems. My favorite Tech Bro, Alexandr Wang, refers to Scale AI as a “data foundry,” and sadly, the metaphor doesn’t stop there.
It took centuries (since industrialization) to get fair wages and safe working conditions for laborers. And now AI Tech is pushing us back hundreds of years in its treatment of workers. The great disadvantage of gig workers is that they are distributed across locations, working in isolation, interacting with a platform, not humans. When they are shut out or not paid for work, there is no one to complain to, no recourse.
There’s a reason it’s called “collective bargaining.” Laborers in factories band together, and their physical presence is imposing. They can also walk off the job, shutting down production and giving them leverage against ownership.
In the new digital labor ecosystem that Alexandr Wang developed and deployed, gig workers are not employees. Scale AI has zero skin in the game. “Taskers,” the cute nickname for the workers toiling at their computers to label, tag, and correct data--tedious work at best, psychologically disturbing at its worst--are nameless, faceless, & dehumanized. They are treated like a necessary but the lowest, most inconvenient part of the data refining process before algorithms can take over. As Karen mentioned, I am digging deep into this problem and hoping to push for accountability from Big Tech. Please check out my post on my topic, the first in a planned series on this issue. <https:// gettingrealaboutai.substack.com/p/labor-exploitation-at-scale>
Thank you, Maryam! It was pretty intimidating to my 19-year-old self, that's for sure. That guy was not smiling at all. Sounds like you had fun in your dad's flour mill 😊
Great post Karen,
Men and women like your father built our country, and no matter how much we immerse ourselves in the Metaverse, we will always need infrastructure. And just as steel built the modern world—bridges, skyscrapers, railways —data is creating the digital world—models, algorithms, intelligent systems. My favorite Tech Bro, Alexandr Wang, refers to Scale AI as a “data foundry,” and sadly, the metaphor doesn’t stop there.
It took centuries (since industrialization) to get fair wages and safe working conditions for laborers. And now AI Tech is pushing us back hundreds of years in its treatment of workers. The great disadvantage of gig workers is that they are distributed across locations, working in isolation, interacting with a platform, not humans. When they are shut out or not paid for work, there is no one to complain to, no recourse.
There’s a reason it’s called “collective bargaining.” Laborers in factories band together, and their physical presence is imposing. They can also walk off the job, shutting down production and giving them leverage against ownership.
In the new digital labor ecosystem that Alexandr Wang developed and deployed, gig workers are not employees. Scale AI has zero skin in the game. “Taskers,” the cute nickname for the workers toiling at their computers to label, tag, and correct data--tedious work at best, psychologically disturbing at its worst--are nameless, faceless, & dehumanized. They are treated like a necessary but the lowest, most inconvenient part of the data refining process before algorithms can take over. As Karen mentioned, I am digging deep into this problem and hoping to push for accountability from Big Tech. Please check out my post on my topic, the first in a planned series on this issue. <https:// gettingrealaboutai.substack.com/p/labor-exploitation-at-scale>
Thank you, Maryam! It was pretty intimidating to my 19-year-old self, that's for sure. That guy was not smiling at all. Sounds like you had fun in your dad's flour mill 😊