Kenyan content moderators sue over working conditions

Four people in Kenya have filed a petition calling on the government to investigate conditions for contractors reviewing the content used to train large language models such as OpenAI's ChatGPT. They allege that these are exploitative and have left some former contractors traumatized. The petition relates to a contract between OpenAI and data annotation services company Sama. Content moderation is necessary because LLM algorithms must be trained to recognise prompts that would generate harmful material. Moderators label examples of hate speech, violence, and sexual abuse. Several petitioners said that Sama offered little psychological support, a claim the company denies. Sama says its clients include 25% of Fortune 50 companies, Google and Microsoft among them. In early 2023, it laid off 260 content moderators and turned its focus to computer vision annotation.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/14/workers-that-made-chatgpt-less-harmful-ask-lawmakers-to-stem-alleged-exploitation-by-big-tech/

Publication: Tech Crunch

Author: Annie Njanja

Publication date: 2023-07-14

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/02/ai-chatbot-training-human-toll-content-moderator-meta-openai

Publication: The Guardian

Author: Niamh Rowe

Publication date: 2023-08-02