Silicon Valley has sold us the illusion that artificial intelligence is a frictionless technology that will bring wealth and prosperity to humanity. But hidden beneath this smooth surface lies the grim reality of a precarious global workforce of millions labouring under often appalling conditions to make AI possible. This talk – based on the recently published book Feeding the Machine – will present research on the intricate network that maintains this exploitative system, revealing the untold truth of AI. Feeding the Machine tells the story of a global technology through the eyes of the people who produce it. The talk will describe the lives of the workers deliberately concealed from view, and the power structures that determine their future. It will center voices of the people whom AI exploits, from accomplished writers and artists to the armies of data annotators, content moderators and warehouse workers. It will further reveal how their dangerous, low-paid labour is connected to longer histories of gendered, racialized, and colonial exploitation.
Mark Graham is Professor of Internet Geography at the University of Oxford and Director of Fairwork. He studied the growth of a global digital labour market since the first arrival of submarine internet cables in Kenya in 2009.
James Muldoon is an Associate Professor in Management at the University of Essex, a Research Associate at the University of Oxford and the Head of Digital Research at the Autonomy think tank. His research examines how modern technologies such as artificial intelligence and digital platforms can create public value and serve the common good.
This talk is co-sponsored by the Information Society Project and the Critical Computing Initiative.