Incident 450: Kenyan Data Annotators Allegedly Exposed to Graphic Content for OpenAI's AI

Description: Sama AI's Kenyan contractors were reportedly asked with excessively low pay to annotate a large volume of disturbing content to improve OpenAI's generative AI systems such as ChatGPT, and whose contract was terminated prior to completion by Sama AI.

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Alleged: OpenAI developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Kenyan Sama AI employees.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
450
Report Count
8
Incident Date
2021-11-01
Editors
Sean McGregor, Khoa Lam
Artificial intelligence quietly relies on workers earning $2 per hour
sciencefocus.com · 2022

In the late 18th Century, an automaton chess master known as the ‘Mechanical Turk’ toured Europe and the US. Designed in 1770 by the inventor Wolfgang von Kempelen, the machine appeared to be able to defeat any human player.

It later turned…

Exclusive: The $2 Per Hour Workers Who Made ChatGPT Safer
time.com · 2023

Content warning: this story contains descriptions of sexual abuse

ChatGPT was hailed as one of 2022’s most impressive technological innovations upon its release last November. The powerful artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot can generate t…

'That Was Torture;' OpenAI Reportedly Relied on Low-Paid Kenyan Laborers to Sift Through Horrific Content to Make ChatGPT Palatable
gizmodo.com · 2023

The seemingly simple, shiny, clean world associated with tech is inevitably almost always simultaneously propped up by something darker hidden just below the surface. From mentally injured content moderators sifting through torrents of vile…

Open AI underpaid 200 Kenyans to perfect ChatGPT then sacked them
qz.com · 2023

As San-Francisco-based AI development firm OpenAI’s dream of achieving general artificial intelligence (AI) picks up speed, reports of how it used underpaid Kenyans to remove racism, sexism, and violence from ChatGPT-3's language model are …

OpenAI Apparently Paid People in the Developing World $2/Hour to Look at the Most Disturbing Content Imaginable
futurism.com · 2023

Content moderation is grueling, deeply traumatizing job. Workers usually don't last more than a year, and due to the horrible things they have to see, they're often left with lasting PTSD once they leave.

That said, for the internet to func…

Sama Cancelled OpenAI's ChatGPT Contract 8 Months Earlier
theinsaneapp.com · 2023

OpenAI, an artificial intelligence company, is accused of paying less than $2 to Kenyan workers to make its ChatGPT chatbot less toxic.

This report is based upon an investigation by Time Magazine. It claims that ChatGPT’s workers in Kenya w…

Kenyan Workers Paid Less Than $2 Per Hour By OpenAI To Work On ChatGPT, Report Says
afrotech.com · 2023

ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, has become a trending topic since it hit the tech scene. 

However, an investigative report has been released that details the alleged exploitation to improve it.

According to TIME, OpenAI — …

The Hidden Workforce That Helped Filter Violence and Abuse Out of ChatGPT
wsj.com · 2023

This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated.

Kate: Hey, it's Kate. Today our producer Annie Minoff is going to bring you a story. It's about a little known part of th…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.