the internet has eyes

About this work

Something we talk quite a bit about in my program at university is the notion that technology is not neutral. That is to say, because humans are involved in its creation, technology can’t be unbiased. For example, for a very long time, AI image generators really leaned into racist stereotype. This is no fault of the AI itself, but rather the fault of the programmers and the people who made the training data.

Recently in a lecture, my professor discussed the way that technology discreetly depends on people in another way: outsourcing, specifically data workers. We talked about people in Kenya  whose job is to sit and look at gruesome, pornographic, and other kinds of troubling content so that you and I as privileged Westerners don’t have to. And these people are often people who, because of their personal or regional economic situation need to work and will do anything for anything.

But imagine the mental toll! Every day, for hours, you have to label horrifying content to keep it out of social media feeds and AI training to make sure your key turns in the door next month. Meanwhile, in the West, we are privileged enough to go about our days — doing assignments, asking AI whatever we ask it, scrolling mindlessly — and never see this content. But if we ever do, we curse the algorithm.

This isn’t meant to criticise or demonise anyone for their use of social media or AI. We all benefit from this exploitation, and we exist at such a time where total unplugging and refusal is more difficult by the day. So my appeal is that we all think: Who’s doing the looking on the other side of the internet?