Digitisation emphasizes: 'The human touch remains the enchantment'
In the ever-evolving world of technology, a significant shift is underway as organizations, unions, associations, and advocacy groups for data workers are experiencing unprecedented growth, both in the U.S. and globally.
At the heart of this movement is the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), an institution that champions AI as an integrative technology designed to benefit the community. One of the key projects at DAIR is the Data Workers' Inquiry (DWI), a community-based research project that empowers data workers to conduct their own workplace investigations.
The institute's research focus lies in the human labour that goes into AI and the associated ethics. This shift in perspective is a response to the increasing volume, variety, and speed of data creation, particularly due to the rise of generative AI. This surge has led to a need for scalable, distributed storage architectures and more complex analytical tools in organisations.
The DWI is adapting Marx's 1880 worker questionnaire for data workers who are essential to AI applications. This adaptation aims to shed light on various issues faced by this workforce, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) paying some workers with Amazon gift cards instead of cash, wage theft, mental health issues due to moderating violent and traumatizing content, and more.
The DWI's efforts are contributing to the growing public awareness of data workers and their working conditions. Despite the White House being in cahoots with tech CEOs, the data worker workforce operates independently.
The Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) believes that AI is not an inevitable development, and their work is a testament to this belief. Companies may want the public to believe that AI is magic, but the reality is that human work is the magic that keeps the products we use daily functioning.
In a world where technology continues to advance at an alarming rate, it's essential to remember that behind every algorithm, there is a human. The DWI and DAIR are working tirelessly to ensure that these humans are treated fairly and ethically in the digital age.
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