Behind the AI’s Gaze: Generative Artificial Intelligence, Microworkers and Digital Slavery

Abstract The advent of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) hides the invisible work done by humans in selecting and refining the data that are necessary for training the algorithms that allow the GenAI system to function in a manner that appears intelligent. This invisible work is done by so-called microworkers, who often work from developing countries in poor conditions, with strongly limited rights with regards to salary, sick leave, holidays, trade union protection and privacy. This special category of workers seems to subvert, in the current techno-liberal market, the relationship that ties humans to machines, whereby the served (humans are served by the machine) become the servant (humans serve the machine to the advantage of a limited part of society). This subversion of the human–machine relationship leads us to analyse Marx’s notion of alienation in modern data-driven society. The old alienation of workers finds a new declination today as “data-based alienation” in the dual sense of alienation of the workers from their data, which are used by digital platforms to organise labour, and the alienation of workers from themselves, since the control of their data by digital platforms reduces their autonomy. Under this last regard lies discussion of the notion of slavery in data-centred societies, where digital platforms have generated new special categories of workers, especially in the AI sector, that tend to to be denied the rights that we normally enjoy and have less space for liberty. We hold that under the model of the digital platforms the old forms of slavery are not used only because there are more efficient forms of individual exploitation that can be reached even with active cooperation of workers and an appearance of legality.