Salvador Santino Regilme
Artificial intelligence (AI) is often heralded as a force of progress, driving innovation, economic growth, and unprecedented efficiency. Tech giants boast of AI’s potential to revolutionize industries, boost productivity, and even tackle pressing global challenges like climate change. But beneath this utopian narrative lies a darker reality—one where the economic rewards of AI are concentrated in the Global North, while its labor exploitation and environmental destruction are outsourced to the Global South. From the exploited workers behind AI training datasets to the environmental costs of massive data centers, the expansion of AI is reinforcing historical patterns of inequality. Rather than creating a democratized technological future, AI is deepening the global divide—what I term AI colonialism—where the benefits accrue to a select few while the burdens are externalized to the most vulnerable.
Despite the perception that AI operates autonomously, the technology relies heavily on human labor—specifically, low-wage workers in the Global South who perform data labeling, content moderation, and other tedious digital tasks. In countries like Kenya, India, and the Philippines, millions of workers sift through vast amounts of data to train AI models, earning as little as $1.50 per hour under precarious gig-economy conditions. The nature of their work can be grueling. Kenyan content moderators employed by subcontractors for platforms like Facebook and TikTok spend hours reviewing violent and disturbing material, often suffering from psychological trauma with little to no mental health support. In India, AI trainers annotate images, transcribe text, and flag inappropriate content—all essential for refining machine learning algorithms—yet they are treated as disposable, denied stable contracts, fair wages, and legal protections.
No comments:
Post a Comment