Sociologist estimates 160 million workers power AI's hidden labor force, mostly in Global South
AntonioCasilli · x · 2026-09-15
AI looks less like a replacement for human labor than a restructuring of it
Sociologist Antonio Casilli, author of Waiting for Robots, estimates that over 160 million people worldwide do data work supporting AI, mostly in the Global South.
- Tasks include data annotation, evaluating AI outputs, and content moderation — essential to training and running models
- Much of it is low-wage, precarious gig work kept out of public view
- Casilli says workers are "purposely hidden by the companies that produce AI because they are the secret ingredient of AI itself"
The report frames the AI boom as raising pressing questions about pay, labor protections, and who captures the industry's gains.
More from AGI Musings
- MBZUAI's Preslav Nakov on Bloomberg TV: generative AI triggers a new information credibility crisis — preslav_nakov · 2026-09-15
- Sam Altman says we could lose control of AI; netizens say the equation isn't hard — thederbiedone · 2026-09-15
- Could pacing the frontier push compute toward existing capabilities and speed near-term diffusion? — matt_slotnick · 2026-09-15
- Researcher challenges Human-Level AI talk: no falsifiable list, and commercial systems may already qualify — ZeeshanZiaML · 2026-09-15
- LeCun: AI researchers living in discrete bits and tokens miss how messy the real world is — AlexTensor · 2026-09-15
- Generative AI is the third information revolution after print and social media, says Prof. Nakov — preslav_nakov · 2026-09-15