UCL STS Seminar series: Dr Mohammad Amir Anwar, FHEA

 The Hidden Underbelly of AI: Workers, Markets and Development in the Global South’

Abstract

From self-checkouts to self-driving cars to social media newsfeed to online shopping recommendations to surveillance systems, artificial intelligence (AI) systems is part of our lives whether we know it or not. Observers proclaim AI as ‘the most important general-purpose technology of our era’ (Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2017). Others say AI will contribute about US$ 15 trillion (roughly the size of the EU economy) to the global economy by 2030 (PwC, 2017). Yet, AI remains an enigma and little is known on how these systems are made. 
For machines dependent on AI to work efficiently, they need to be fed massive amounts of training data. This is called machine learning (the science of getting computers to make decisions), which is done by behind-the-scenes human labour. Driverless cars and the ChatGPT (an AI chatbot) are both enabled by AI training activities (or data work) done by human labour connected to planetary networks of work (see Anwar and Graham, 2022; also Perrigo, 2023). In other words, the poor and marginalised in the Global South form the hidden underbelly of the Silicon Valley, training some of their most advanced machines. In this talk, I discuss what this work means for workers and markets in the Global South, by drawing on multi-country and multi-year research on data work on the African continent. Overall, I challenge both the utopian and dystopian narratives around AI such as automation-related job losses; AI to free us from the burden of drudgery.