The "ghost work" of AI is done by low-paid workers across developing countries.
The hidden ghost work of data cleaning, image labeling, text processing, and content moderation is being performed by back-end workers across developing economies. Much has been written about the wage differentials in digital labor and the insufficient remuneration being paid to surveilled Global South workers doing the “janitorial" labor that keeps digital platforms healthy and productive. Not only this, it has also come to light that many AI assistants are in fact fully powered by real human agents working in low- and middle-income countries. When massive data sets are used to train AI systems, the individual images and videos involved are commonly tagged and labeled. There are millions of low-paid tech workers doing this back-end work.
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Amazon's AI recruitment tool discriminated against women.
The online giant created its own recruitment tool to help evaluate the resumes of people who for software developer positions. It was soon discovered that the algorithm was poorly ranking applications from people it assumed were women. This is because it was trained on a dataset that consisted primarily of men’s resumes that were submitted to the company over the past decade. The system was taught to penalized any resume that included the word “women’s” or listed that the candidate graduated from a couple of specific women’s-only universities. Use of the software has been discontinued.
Economic Justice Gender Justice Issue 2013Michigan’s Unemployment Insurance Agency's Michigan Integrated Data Automated System incorrectly flagged about 40,000 people as committing unemployment fraud during the 2013–2015 period.
The state worked to fix the problems caused by the AI system, but the damage has major: the wrongly accused Michigan residents have been subjected to denied unemployment benefits, fines, repossessions, and even bankruptcy.
Economic Justice Issue 2023AI is poised to exacerbate the Black-white wealth gap in the United States.
The median wealth amassed by Black households in the United States is just 15 percent of what that of white households. That means that Black families have about $44,900 USD to their $285,000 USD. This is the result of many systemic factors that stretch all the way back to the the time of chattel slavery. The McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility predicts that AI will add about $7 trillion USD to the global economy each year, with nearly $2 trillion USD of that concentrated in the U.S. But it also warns that if generative AI technology development continues on its current trajectory, it will widen that wealth gap. The prediction is that by 2045, it will grow by a whopping $43 billion USD every year.
Economic Justice Racial Justice Issue 2023Medicare Advantage insurance plans use AI to determine what care it will cover for its 31 million elderly subscribers in the United States.
Journalists at Stat found that companies are specifically using AI systems to deny coverage for care. The massive problem: the algorithms are a black box that can’t be peered into, making it nearly impossible for patients to fight for health care coverage when they don’t know why they were denied it in the first place.
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