How Training AI Is Taking a Heavy Toll on Kenyan Workers Earning Just $2 an Hour
Update: 2025-10-11
Description
The source documents expose a significant ethical crisis regarding the hidden labor required to train and moderate advanced Artificial Intelligence models, focusing specifically on Kenyan workers in Nairobi’s "Silicon Savannah." These individuals, often highly educated but facing high unemployment, are employed by outsourcing firms like Sama and Remotasks to perform critical data annotation and content moderation for global tech giants, including OpenAI, Meta, and Google. The material reveals that while these jobs are marketed as a pathway out of poverty, workers are often subject to exploitative wages, earning as little as $2 an hour, and are forced to review extremely graphic and traumatic content, leading to severe psychological scars and PTSD. Ultimately, the texts argue that this business model represents a form of "AI colonialism," wherein the vulnerable labor of the Global South subsidizes massive profits and technological advancement in the Global North, prompting workers to organize for better pay and legal protections.
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