Data Workers in AI development

The theme of sovereignty in relation to digital technologies has gained growing attention in recent years, as demonstrated by concepts such as data sovereignty (Hummel et al., 2021) and digital sovereignty (Pinto, 2018). The literature on digital sovereignty comprises a diverse theoretical-methodolo...

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Main Author: Jonas Chagas Lucio Valente
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciência da Informação Ibict/UFRJ 2024-12-01
Series:Liinc em Revista
Subjects:
Online Access:https://revista.ibict.br/liinc/article/view/7302
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author Jonas Chagas Lucio Valente
author_facet Jonas Chagas Lucio Valente
author_sort Jonas Chagas Lucio Valente
collection DOAJ
description The theme of sovereignty in relation to digital technologies has gained growing attention in recent years, as demonstrated by concepts such as data sovereignty (Hummel et al., 2021) and digital sovereignty (Pinto, 2018). The literature on digital sovereignty comprises a diverse theoretical-methodological universe (Couture, Toupin, 2019), with authors addressing different dimensions of the theme, from the sovereignty of the data generated by groups, such as Indigenous people (Kukutai et al., 2016) to geopolitics of AI (Larssen, 2022). This paper aims to address an underappreciated dimension: the challenges to digital sovereignty in labor relations. Focusing specifically on workers in Artificial Intelligence development. The paper is guided by the following research question: what are the challenges to the sovereignty of AI data workers from the Global South on cloudwork platforms? Discussing the organization of the labor process on cloudwork platforms through a lense of historical-dialectic materialism, it highlights challenges posed by workers’ structurally weak bargaining power and lack of access to labor rights and social protections, arguing that such factors limit the individual and collective sovereignty of workers. Such challenges are illustrated by discussing two major cloudwork platforms: Amazon Mechanical Turk and Microworkers.
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spelling doaj-art-222d909064f241e3b1cece6279557baa2025-02-04T20:06:03ZengPrograma de Pós-Graduação em Ciência da Informação Ibict/UFRJLiinc em Revista1808-35362024-12-0120210.18617/liinc.v20i2.73029745Data Workers in AI developmentJonas Chagas Lucio Valente0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2201-6930Oxford Internet InstituteThe theme of sovereignty in relation to digital technologies has gained growing attention in recent years, as demonstrated by concepts such as data sovereignty (Hummel et al., 2021) and digital sovereignty (Pinto, 2018). The literature on digital sovereignty comprises a diverse theoretical-methodological universe (Couture, Toupin, 2019), with authors addressing different dimensions of the theme, from the sovereignty of the data generated by groups, such as Indigenous people (Kukutai et al., 2016) to geopolitics of AI (Larssen, 2022). This paper aims to address an underappreciated dimension: the challenges to digital sovereignty in labor relations. Focusing specifically on workers in Artificial Intelligence development. The paper is guided by the following research question: what are the challenges to the sovereignty of AI data workers from the Global South on cloudwork platforms? Discussing the organization of the labor process on cloudwork platforms through a lense of historical-dialectic materialism, it highlights challenges posed by workers’ structurally weak bargaining power and lack of access to labor rights and social protections, arguing that such factors limit the individual and collective sovereignty of workers. Such challenges are illustrated by discussing two major cloudwork platforms: Amazon Mechanical Turk and Microworkers.https://revista.ibict.br/liinc/article/view/7302digital sovereigntyartificial intelligencedata workdigital labour platformscloudworkai
spellingShingle Jonas Chagas Lucio Valente
Data Workers in AI development
Liinc em Revista
digital sovereignty
artificial intelligence
data work
digital labour platforms
cloudwork
ai
title Data Workers in AI development
title_full Data Workers in AI development
title_fullStr Data Workers in AI development
title_full_unstemmed Data Workers in AI development
title_short Data Workers in AI development
title_sort data workers in ai development
topic digital sovereignty
artificial intelligence
data work
digital labour platforms
cloudwork
ai
url https://revista.ibict.br/liinc/article/view/7302
work_keys_str_mv AT jonaschagasluciovalente dataworkersinaidevelopment