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The African workers driving the AI revolution, for about a dollar an hour

Social media content and AI training data are processed in outsource centres in the global south, where long hours, low pay and exposure to disturbing material are the norm

Workers at one of the content moderation centres we visited were left crying and shaking after witnessing beheading videos, and were told by management that at some point during the week they could have a 30-minute break to see a “wellness counsellor” – a colleague who had no formal training as a psychologist. Workers who ran away from their desks in response to what they’d seen were told they had committed a violation of the company’s policy because they hadn’t remembered to enter the right code on their computer indicating they were either “idle” or on a “bathroom break” – meaning their productivity scores could be marked down accordingly. Their employer was a client of Meta’s, a prominent business process outsourcing (BPO) company with headquarters in San Francisco and delivery centres in east Africa where insecure and low-income work could be distributed to local employees of the firm.

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