When Kenyan workers were lured by American companies for AI jobs, they didn’t expect overwork, low wages or abuse.
Kenyan civil rights activist Nerima Wako-Ojiwa said the desperation of workers in a country with high unemployment rates has led to a culture of exploitation with unfair wages and no job security.
“It’s terrible to see how many American companies are doing it wrong here,” Wako Ojiwa said. “And that’s something you don’t do at their house, so why do it here?”
Why are tech giants coming to Kenya?
It is a well-known story that artificial intelligence takes away jobs from humans, but now it is also creating jobs. Millions of people are growing the workforce around the world to keep AI running smoothly. It is a tedious task that must be done accurately and quickly. To do it cheaply, work is often outsourced to developing countries like Kenya.
Nairobi, Kenya is one of the main hubs for this type of activity. This is a country that is hungry for jobs. The youth unemployment rate is as high as 67%.
“The workforce is so large and so desperate that no matter what wage you pay, no matter what working conditions, there will be someone willing to take the job,” Wako-Ojiwa said.
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With one million young people entering the job market each year, governments are courting technology giants like Microsoft, Google, Apple and Intel. Officials called Kenya “silicon savannah” — tech-savvy and digitally connected.
Kenyan President William Ruto has offered financial incentives on top of already lax labor laws to attract technology companies.
What does the “human in the loop” do with AI?
Naftali Wambaro, a father of two with a university degree in mathematics, was overjoyed to find a job in Nairobi in the emerging field of artificial intelligence. He is what is called a “person on the ground.” People who classify, label, and sift through large amounts of data to train and improve AI for companies like Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google.
Wambaro and other digital workers spent eight hours a day in front of a screen studying photos and videos, drawing boxes around objects to label them, and teaching AI algorithms to recognize them. .
Human labelers tag cars and pedestrians to teach autonomous vehicles not to collide. Humans can circle abnormalities on CT, MRI, and X-ray images to teach AI to recognize diseases. Even as AI gets smarter, there will always be new devices and inventions that need to be labeled, so humans will always be needed in the loop.
People caught in the loop are not only in Kenya, but also in India, the Philippines, and Venezuela. These are often countries with low wages but large populations, well-educated but unemployed people.
unfair labor practices
What looked like a ticket to the future soon became clear to some who say they had been exploited. Wako Ojiwa said employment is not stable, with some contracts providing employment for only a few days, while others provide weekly or monthly employment. She calls this workspace an AI sweatshop, with computers instead of sewing machines.
Workers are typically employed by outsourcing companies, primarily in the United States, rather than being directly employed by large technology companies.
Humans in the loop earn between $1.50 and $2 an hour.
“Before taxes, this is gross,” Wambaro said.
Wambalo, Nathan Nkunzimana and Fasica Berhane Gebrekidan were hired by SAMA, the American outsourcing company that hired Meta and OpenAI. Based in California’s Bay Area, SAMA employs more than 3,000 workers in Kenya. According to documents reviewed by 60 Minutes, OpenAI agreed to pay SAMA $12.50 per hour per worker, far more than the $2 workers actually received, but SAMA did not agree to pay the amount it paid. claims it is a fair wage for the region.
Mr Wambaro disagrees.
“If the big tech companies are going to stay in this business, they need to do it the right way,” he said. “It’s not because we recognize that Kenya is a third-world country; it’s because we say, ‘I would normally pay $30 for this job in the United States, but you’re Kenya, so $2 is fine.'”
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Nkunzimana said he took up the job because he had a family to support.
Berhane Gebrekidan lived paycheck to paycheck and was unable to save anything. She said she has seen people fired for complaining.
“We were walking on eggshells,” she said.
They claim that SAMA forced workers to complete tasks faster than the companies requested, an allegation SAMA denies. If a six-month contract is completed in three months, the additional months may be unpaid and you may lose your job. They said Sama would reward quick work.
“They would say, ‘Thank you,’ and they would give me a bottle of soda and two Kentucky Fried Chickens,” Wambaro said.
Ephantas Kanyugi, Joan Kinyua, Joy Minayo, Michael Jeffrey Asia and Duncan Koech are all run by Scale AI, another American AI training company that has come under criticism in Kenya. He worked at Remotaks, a click-work platform. Workers signed up online, chose to work remotely, and were paid for each task. There were times when they were not paid.
“When it comes to payday, they close your account and tell you that you violated policy,” Kanyugi said.
The employees say they have no recourse or even a way to sue.
The company told 60 Minutes it was “compensated for work done in accordance with community guidelines.” In March, Remotasks was abruptly shut down in Kenya and all workers were locked out of their accounts after workers began publicly complaining.
Mental burden of AI training
Employees say some of Meta and OpenAI’s projects have also caused psychological damage. Wambaro was tasked with training AI to recognize and remove pornography, hate speech, and excessive violence from social media. He had to sift through the worst of the worst content online for hours on end.
“I saw people being slaughtered,” Wambaro said. “People who have sex with animals. People who physically and sexually abuse children. People who commit suicide.”
Berhane Gebrekidan thought she was hired to translate, but instead ended up reviewing content featuring dismembered bodies and victims of drone attacks.
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“Now I find it difficult to even have a conversation with people,” she says. “But I find it easier to cry than to talk.”
Ms Wambaro said having to look online had a negative impact on her marriage.
“After seeing so many sex acts and pornography at work, I hated sex,” he said.
SAMA said mental health counseling was provided by “fully qualified professionals”. Workers claim it was woefully inadequate.
“We need psychiatrists,” Wambaro said. “What we want is a qualified psychologist who knows exactly what we’re going through and how we can cope.”
workers fight back
Wambaro and Berhane Gebrekidan are among around 200 digital workers who are suing SAMA and Meta over “unfair working conditions” that have led to mental health problems.
Nathan Nkunzimana said: “The psychiatrist has proven that we are completely ill.” “It has been proven that he is completely ill,” he said.
Wambaro said it’s the responsibility of big tech companies to know how their jobs are impacting their workers.
“They’re providing jobs,” he said.
Berhane Gebrekidan feels that companies know that their employees are struggling, but they don’t care.
“…Just because we’re black or just because we’re vulnerable at the moment doesn’t give them the right to exploit us in this way,” she said.
Kenya has labor laws, but they are outdated and do not address digital labor, said civil rights activist Wako Ojiwa.
“I think our labor laws need to recognize that, but it’s not just Kenya,” Wako Ojiwa said. “Because what happens when we start to oppose a lot of businesses closing down and moving to neighboring countries in terms of protecting workers.”
SAMA has terminated the harmful content project that Wambalo and Berhane Gebrekidan were working on. The company did not respond to an on-camera interview, nor did Scale AI, which ran the Remotask website in Kenya.
Meta and OpenAi told 60 Minutes they are committed to safe working conditions, including fair wages and access to mental health counseling.
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