---
title: "Self-Driving Car Companies Depend on Cheap Labor From Venezuela"
description: "Self-driving car companies are benefitting from cheap Venezuelan labor as they compile mountains of annotated training data for their AI."
date: "2019-08-22"
modified: "2019-08-22"
authors:
  - name: "Dan Robitzski"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/self-driving-car-labor-venezuela"
categories:
  - "Advanced Transport"
  - "Artificial Intelligence"
  - "Self-Driving Vehicles"
tags:
  - "artificial intelligence"
  - "Autonomous vehicles"
  - "labor"
  - "the digest"
  - "transport"
---

# Self-Driving Car Companies Depend on Cheap Labor From Venezuela

![Self-driving car companies are benefitting from cheap Venezuelan labor as they compile mountains of annotated training data for their AI.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/self-driving-car-companies-labor-venezuela.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: julientromeur/Victor Tangermann\</em\>*

## Data Farm

In order to teach a car to drive itself, its artificial intelligence needs to be presented with [thousands of examples](<https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence-hype>) of things it might encounter on the road: pedestrians about to cross a street, for instance, or specific street signs.

Now, with [economic turmoil in Venezuela](<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/world/americas/venezuela-economy.html>) that left many impoverished, companies that gather and label this [training data](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/biased-self-driving-cars-darker-skin>) for self-driving car developers are relying on cheap labor from the South American country, [according to *MIT Technology Review*](<https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614194/venezuela-crisis-platform-work-trains-self-driving-car-ai-data/>).

## Crowdsourcing

In 2018, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans signed on to work for AI data aggregating companies including Mighty AI, Playment, Hive, and Scale, *MIT Tech Review* reports. The vast scale of the operations illustrates once more how cutting-edge AI tech often depends on the [grunt work of impoverished workers](<https://futurism.com/finnish-startup-prison-labor-train-ai>).

The pay isn't great, *MIT Tech Review* reports, but workers likely flocked to these companies in particular because they provide steadier work than other data labeling jobs that tend to ebb and flow over time.

"\[The Venezuelans\] were aware that, on one level, it's exploitation and they have to do it because everything else failed them," crowdwork expert Florian A. Schmidt told *MIT Tech Review*.

**READ MORE:** [Unable to buy cars, Venezuelans labor to make sure robotic ones don’t crash](<https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614194/venezuela-crisis-platform-work-trains-self-driving-car-ai-data/>) \[*MIT Technology Review*\]

**More on self-driving car technology:** *[Expert Slams Waymo Safety Data: “They Obviously Do Not Trust These Numbers”](<https://futurism.com/waymo-safety-data-trust-numbers>)*

## Author
Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://x.com/danrobitzski>)