EXISTING IN ECONOMIC STASIS
They also exist in a kind of economic stasis. “I’ve never met a worker who would tell me: ‘This job gave me the chance to buy my house or send my kids to university’,” says Milagros Miceli, a researcher at the Distributed AI Research Institute and Weizenbaum Institute who has worked with scores of data workers across the world.
Miceli recalls speaking to about a dozen data-labelling workers earning about US$1.70 an hour in an Argentina slum in 2019. When she returned in 2021, none had moved on and their wages had barely increased. They were still living below the poverty line.
Workers often have to take second jobs or night shifts, says Madhumita Murgia, the AI editor of the Financial Times whose recent book Code Dependent features their stories from across the developing world. One woman who worked for Samasource Impact Sourcing in Nairobi, for instance, couldn’t support herself and her daughter on her salary and had to move in with her parents, Murgia says.
The job itself is precarious. Another worker in Bulgaria couldn’t make rent because she was suspended from accepting paid tasks after complaining about night shifts. “You’re one step away from everything unravelling,” says Murgia. End customers are the likes of Microsoft and OpenAI, some of the most valuable firms in the world. “It’s like the factory worker in the Philippines who doesn’t realise the dress they’re stitching is going to be a US$3,000 gown.”