--- title: "African Workers Doing OpenAI’s Training Say They’re Being Subjected to “Modern Day Slavery”" description: "Low-paid African content moderators, many of whom are living with PTSD, are calling on Biden to help ensure fair working conditions." date: "2024-05-23" modified: "2024-05-23" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/african-workers-openai-training" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "OpenAI" tags: - "ai" - "ai training" - "content moderation" - "the digest" --- # African Workers Doing OpenAI’s Training Say They’re Being Subjected to “Modern Day Slavery” ![Low-paid African content moderators, many of whom are living with PTSD, are calling on Biden to help ensure fair working conditions.]() *Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI participates in the "Charting the Path Forward: The Future of Artificial Intelligence" at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders' Week in San Francisco, California, on November 16, 2023. The APEC Summit takes place through November 17. (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP) (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images) \Image: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDSAFP via Getty Images\* ## Asking For Help Low-paid AI workers in Africa who perform AI and social media content moderation work for major Silicon Valley companies like Meta and OpenAI have published an [open letter]() imploring US President Joe Biden to help ensure fair working conditions in a system that the letter's 97 signees say amounts to "modern day slavery," [*Wired* reports](). To build AI models, like OpenAI's DALL-E image creator or Meta's "Llama" language model, those companies require a massive — [and endless]() — amount of data, which has generally been acquired by a process of scraping the web. But AI models are what they eat: if you feed them a ton of wretched, unsafe, or low-quality material, their outputs will reflect those undesirable qualities. That's where [these workers]() come in. Their job is effectively to clean AI training datasets, removing bad or unsafe content and providing labels for text, images, and other inputs. But this job takes a toll; these folks are tasked with constantly consuming the worst aspects of humanity, all to ensure the safety of what those on the other side of the process experience as a human-free tool. This work is done at an incredibly low wages. Largely based in Kenya, African content moderators are often paid a measly sum of [less than two dollars an hour](). In the letter, the moderators also say their work has left them with life-altering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); the signees further claim that they "weren't warned about the horrors of the work" before starting. "US Big Tech companies are systemically abusing and exploiting African workers," reads the letter, which was published Wednesday ahead of Kenyan President William Ruto's visit to the US this week. "Our working conditions amount to modern day slavery." "Any trade-related discussions between the US and Kenya," signees add, "must take into account these abuses and ensure that the rights of all workers are protected." ## Great Costs The letter offers a harrowing picture of the African tech workers' day-to-day lives. The job, the workers say, comes at "great cost to our health, our lives and our families." "US tech giants export their toughest and most dangerous jobs overseas," the document continues. "Our work involves watching murder and beheadings, child abuse and rape, pornography and bestiality, often for more than 8 hours a day." Particularly in the case of AI, it's easy to forget that there are people on the other side of slick, automated tools and apps who work to keep those products safe — especially when the people who do are located in the global south in what, to us, is a largely invisible factory. Whether this letter influences policy remains to be seen. In the meantime, though, it's a reminder that these people are real — *our* experience on these apps is proof enough. **More on AI training:** [*AI Companies Running out of Training Data after Burning Through Entire Internet*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()