Feeding the machine

AI promises to transform everything, from work to transport to war, and to solve our problems with total ease, just like magic. But hidden beneath the promise is a very human cost. Everything AI can do depends on armies of annotators, moderators and other data workers – people doing poorly paid, gruelling labour for the benefit of some of the richest companies in the world. Based on hundreds of interviews and more than a decade of research, ‘Feeding the Machine’ reveals the exploitation that makes AI look so effortless, talking to the people that build it and those it threatens to replace. It shows that all this new technology is founded on old, brutal systems of colonialism and capitalism, and details exactly what we need to do, individually and globally, if we are going to protect our future, and resist the harm that AI is already causing.