Underage Workers Fuel AI Development in Developing Countries

In developing nations like Pakistan, the artificial intelligence supply chain employs unexpected workers: underage teens. A case in point is Hassan, a 15-year-old boy from Burewala, Punjab region of Pakistan. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Hassan was an average teenager who enjoyed playing football with his friends. However, the lockdowns turned him into a virtual hermit, with his mobile phone as his main companion.

Unlike his peers, Hassan wasn’t spending his time on TikTok or video games. Instead, from the confines of his bedroom, he was contributing to the global AI supply chain. Hassan was part of the human workforce that labels and uploads data to train machine-learning algorithms for some of the world’s leading AI firms.

The process of training machine-learning algorithms involves labeling raw data by humans and verifying their accuracy. The range of data-labeling tasks varies from simple tasks such as identifying images of street lamps or comparing similar e-commerce products to complex tasks like content moderation. The latter involves workers classifying harmful content from data scraped from the internet’s farthest corners.

Hassan began his journey in this field through Toloka, an online crowdsourcing platform that offers work from anywhere, anytime. A friend introduced him to the platform, where an hour’s work could earn him approximately $1 to $2 — significantly higher than the national minimum wage of $0.26 at that time.

However, Hassan’s story is not unique. The latest AI news reveals that many underage teens in developing countries are part of the AI supply chain. Platforms like Toloka require their workers to be over 18 years old. However, teens like Hassan bypass this requirement by using a relative’s details and a corresponding payment method.

The AI images generator and AI text generator tools that we use daily are products of this global AI supply chain. As Saiph Savage, director of Northeastern University’s Civic AI Lab, puts it, “AI is presented as a magical box that can do everything. People just simply don’t know that there are human workers behind the scenes.” And some of these human workers are children.

In fact, the practice of underage teens working on these platforms is widespread. In Kenya, for instance, a worker who joined Appen at the age of 16 shared that many of his peers discussed online jobs and how they joined using their parents’ ID. After school, they would log on to complete annotation tasks late into the night, often for eight hours or more.

Hassan’s story offers a glimpse into the hidden realities of the AI supply chain. While AI video generator tools and other AI technologies are transforming our world, it’s crucial to recognize the human effort behind these advancements, particularly when they involve underage workers. As consumers and users of AI tools, it’s our responsibility to stay informed and advocate for ethical practices in the AI industry.