AI for Humanity

CHAPTER 9Sustainable AI Commercialization

With reliable funding and the right policies, governments and philanthropy can ensure that AIs are used to reduce inequity. Just as the world needs its brightest people focused on its biggest problems, we will need to focus the world's best AIs on its biggest problems.

— Bill Gates

AI AND THE FIGHT FOR EQUALITY AND SAFETY

Dark Side of AI: The Struggles of Africa's “Click Workers”

In the quiet moments before sleep, haunting images flood Mophat Okinyi's mind. Visions of graphic violence, rape, and bestiality. Remnants of the text messages he had to review and label for months. These weren't just words; they were scars on his psyche.

Mophat, a 27-year-old “click worker” in Nairobi, Kenya, had to filter out harmful content for OpenAI's ChatGPT. “It has severely affected my mental health,” he admits.¹

Every day, Mophat sifted through hundreds of text passages, many depicting harrowing scenes of violence. The emotional toll was immense. He distanced himself from loved ones, projecting the horrors he read onto strangers. The breaking point came when his pregnant wife, unable to recognize the man he had become, left him. “I lost my family,” he said.

Mophat's employer was Sama, a California-based tech outsourcing firm that serves many US tech giants, including OpenAI and Meta. Sama paid workers like Mophat between US$1.46 and US$3.74 an ...