African AI Workers Claim Human Rights Abuses: Here’s What We Should Do

Workers’ solidarity is an important step, but we need action from companies and regulators

97 AI workers from the African Content Moderators Union have signed an open letter to President Biden demanding that US tech companies and the US Government take action to prevent the systematic abuse of the rights of African workers in AI supply chains.

In the letter, workers testify to “watching murder and beheadings, child abuse and rape, pornography and bestiality, often for more than 8 hours a day. Many of us do this work for less than $2 per hour.” 

When these disputes feel like they are at arm’s length, tech companies can deflect responsibility for working conditions back onto outsourced providers. These companies are unlikely to act unless they are under intense scrutiny and pressure from civil society and government watchdogs. We need to support workers with a campaign to raise minimum standards in the sector and force companies and government regulators to take immediate action.

In early 2023, Time journalist Billy Perrigo published an article revealing Kenyan tech workers were earning less than $2 an hour to train OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3, with stories of exposure to toxic content and substandard working conditions.

Since this investigation, we have spoken with over forty workers as part of fieldwork for a Fairwork research project based at Sama, a prominent data annotation company with facilities in Nairobi, Kampala and Gulu. Workers we spoke to felt like they worked in appalling conditions in dead-end jobs and didn’t receive the respect and remuneration they deserved for their difficult work. They complained of exploitative policies at the company and a lack of support from unions and their own government. During our fieldwork, some of these workers made headlines when they formed the world’s first content moderators union and held a sit-in outside Sama’s Nairobi offices.

The workers’ latest move targets a visit this week by Kenyan President William Ruto to the White House. Workers seek to raise awareness of their plight so that President Biden could create more equitable arrangements between powerful American tech companies and African outsourcing firms.

However, on their own, this action is unlikely to go far without further co-ordination and support. Ruto is a wealthy businessman and part of Kenya’s small and insular political elite that has more interest in attracting Western investment rather than uplifting the conditions of workers. The Biden administration likes to talk about worker-centric policies, but workers outside of the United States are seldom top priority for the administration, particularly during an election year.

The situation is dire and more pressure is needed to force the hand of powerful actors. We discuss some of these strategies in our book, Feeding the Machine: the Hidden Human Labour Powering AI. Collective organising of local tech workers on the ground at these outsourcing centres is an important first step. They can build power, set demands, negotiate with bosses and form a united voice to exercise leadership over the global movement.

But, as we discuss in the book, we cannot stop here. Many of these workers are on short-term contracts and tech firms have a long history of union-busting and marginalising politicised workers. Big Tech firms can offload responsibility onto outsourced companies and these companies do not necessarily have the same concerns about brand reputation as the Metas and Microsofts of the world.

Outsourcing companies are also forced to compete against one another in a cut-throat market for data annotation work from leading tech firms. It’s difficult for any single company to make significant changes because they will likely just lose contracts to other firms across the globe.

The powerful actors in these production networks are the lead firms – the wealthy tech companies often based in the United States or Europe – that have the capacity to dictate conditions further down the supply chain. When we visited three centres in East Africa we noted a number of important improvements in working conditions that had been made directly as a result of requests by Meta. Lead firms have the power to make a big difference in how this work is organised.

Tech firms must show greater moral leadership on the question of outsourced labour and commit to significantly raising conditions for workers in their supply chains. Due to consumer and corporate pressure, these companies have pledged to lead the way on environmental issues and (with some mixed results) perform much better than many other industries.

There is a certain parallel with debates in the 90s and 00s about sweatshops in the Global South. The argument from globalisation proponents was that Western companies were a force for good by providing work to underemployed workers that was superior to local alternatives. But the question is not whether Western companies should invest or not, it’s about drawing attention to the moral choices of companies to accept inhumane working conditions in their supply chains. After experiencing record profits throughout the 2020s, it would cost these tech companies very little to improve conditions and ensure workers were treated with dignity and respect.

But voluntary commitments from companies will never be enough. Governments must also enact stronger supply chain laws to enforce standards on tech firms outsourcing work to the Global South, such as with the German Supply Chain Law (2023). According to this law, all companies with over 1,000 employees must engage with their suppliers (even outside of Germany) to ensure that they comply with a set of minimum standards contained in the law. It’s still too early to say how effective such laws will be, and there are obvious loopholes (OpenAI, for example, has under 1,000 employees), but they are a step in the right direction in placing greater responsibility on firms to enforce compliance throughout their supply chain.

Workers like those in the African Content Moderators Union organising around their own self-interest is an important first step. But we need to support their movement with solidarity actions that amplify their voices and put demands on tech companies and governments to make real change.