India has long been an “IT support outsourcing hub,” but the advent of AI has raised concerns about the welfare of women workers in the industry.
According to the BBC, more Indian women are finding work as data annotators as tech companies seek to take advantage of remote workers and lower-cost employment in smaller towns and rural areas. According to Business Insider, it helps AI models “fine-tune” their behavior by labeling content as “helpful” or “natural-sounding,” or flagging it as “wrong, rambling, robotic, or offensive.” Much of the content they have to view is violent, abusive, and offensive.
“Mental burden”
“Women make up more than half of this workforce,” the Guardian reported. The annotator role is being “actively promoted online”, with the promise of “easy” or “zero investment” job opportunities that are flexible and require minimal skills and training. In fact, annotators are exposed to approximately 800 videos a day, many of which include pornography, sexual assault, child abuse, and graphic violence.
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As a result, “the world is seeing cleaner feed” but remains largely blind to women, who have to absorb “trauma” so machines can learn what to block, India Today said. They are exposed to “the internet’s darkest material.”
Such exposure can cause sleep disturbances, distorted social relationships, and a defensive “emotional numbness” that is “rarely acknowledged.” Although “the image remains long after the shift ends,” “mental health support is limited.” Often working remotely and balancing other aspects of their lives, these women are left “unseen, unheard, and exhausted.”
The Guardian said their “mental burden” was “further increased” by legal isolation. They are often unable to tell friends and family about the content they view at work because they are bound by “strict non-disclosure agreements.” “Violation of the NDA may result in termination and legal action.”
“Income without immigration”
According to US company Scry AI, India’s rural towns and villages are “estimated to have a workforce of at least 200,000 annotators,” Agence France-Presse reported. This represents “approximately half of the world’s data labeling workforce.”
The Guardian said women are seen by companies as “reliable and detail-oriented” recruits and are “more likely to accept work from home or contract work”. These jobs offer them “rare access to income without immigration” and rare opportunities for “upward shifts.”
“The appeal is understandable,” said India Today. Women can feel the “empowering” power of paid work without leaving their communities. “Even a modest salary can support a family, fund an education, and achieve some degree of independence,” but may otherwise be limiting.
