Making Data: The Work Behind Artificial Intelligence

TL;DR

This paper examines the often invisible, precarious microwork involved in AI data preparation, focusing on Brazil to shed light on workers' conditions and the broader implications for AI development and labor practices.

Contribution

It documents the conditions of microwork in Brazil, providing portraits of workers to address invisibility and inform future research and policy.

Findings

Microwork involves precarious, underpaid, and invisible labor.

Workers perform repetitive tasks requiring cognitive skills.

Study highlights the global and evolving nature of microwork.

Abstract

AI generates both enthusiasm and disillusionment, with promises that often go unfulfilled. It is therefore not surprising that human labor, which is its fundamental component, is also subject to these same deceptions. The development of "smart technologies" depends, at different stages, on a multitude of precarious, underpaid and invisible workers, who, dispersed globally, carry out repetitive, fragmented activities, paid per task and completed in a few seconds. These are workers who label data to train algorithms, through tasks that require the intuitive, creative and cognitive abilities of human beings, such as categorizing images, classifying advertisements, transcribing audio and video, evaluating advertisements, moderating content on social media, labeling human anatomical points of interest, digitizing documents, etc. This form of work is often referred to as "microwork". Our contribution, which documents the conditions of microwork in Brazil and offers portraits of the workers, is a step in the wider effort to overcome the current state of invisibilization. It opens up avenues for future research, with the aim of better characterizing this new form of work, tracing its changes over time in relation to the dynamics of globalization and, ideally, identifying levers for action and transitions.