When you grab your phone or log onto your computer to browse social media, search through videos, or even used the latest AI tools you likely don’t put much thought into how the content and tools you use are developed.

People just accept that tech companies like Meta, OpenAI, and others work their ‘magic’ and everything works smoothly (most of the time).

The reality is, however, that there are thousands of people who have to manually sift through all the content to ensure it is safe, accurate, and categorized properly for the end users.

These aren’t ‘tech-bros’ living in fancy homes in California. Most of them are poor people who live in Kenya, where much of this type of work is outsourced.

While outsourced tech jobs have the potential to improve the lives of millions in poorer countries, there is also the very real potential for exploitation.

And that is just what seems to have happened in this case.

A group of low-paid “AI Workers” in Kenya have published an open letter to President Joe Biden asking him to step in to require fair working conditions. The letter goes as far as to say:

“Our working conditions amount to modern day slavery.”

That is a pretty serious allegation, especially from a group of people who work in what amounts to an office environment.

After reading the letter and looking into the situation more, however, it is clear that these people are are being mistreated and exploited at a minimum.

One of the tasks that these individuals are required to perform is labeling images and videos in order to train generative AI tools. To do this, the open letter explains:

“Our work involves watching murder and beheadings, child abuse and rape, pornography and bestiality, often for more than 8 hours a day.”

Stumbling upon this type of content online for just a moment can be disturbing and difficult. Viewing it for 8+ hours per day would undoubtedly be emotionally damaging.

To make it worse, the companies that these people work for do not provide any type of mental health assistance, which has resulted in many of them living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other issues.

To add insult to injury, they are generally working for less than $2 per hour. It is also important to know that when hired on for these jobs, they are not told about the disturbing types of content that they would have to view.

Unemployment in Kenya is very high, so people are desperate for any jobs they can get, even if they are exploitative.

While there has not yet been a response from the US president, the open letter is getting attention from many people online.

Hopefully it will be a catalyst to improve working conditions in these challenging environments.

Our technology should not be built on the backs of exploited labor.

If you enjoyed that story, check out what happened when a guy gave ChatGPT $100 to make as money as possible, and it turned out exactly how you would expect.