AI impersonation: workers are tasked with simulating machinic neutrality while processing human emotion.

Pocas veces me verán recomendar algo con tanto énfasis como este fanzine sobre quienes filtran lo peor de internet para que el resto no tengamos que verlo. Lectura obligatoria si realmente querés saber lo que es la moderación de contenido.

Disponible también en español: data-workers.org/horacio/

El fanzine «Trabajando para la Máquina: Fragmentos de vida y muerte de un moderador de contenido» expone las consecuencias psicológicas para los moderadores de contenido de META y de otras Big Tech.

«Nada peor que mostrar humanidad en un lugar que se alimenta de cadáveres digitales»

Zine’s cover. An illustration showing two hands typing on a keyboard, the fingertips and some of the keys are stained with red blood. The title 'Trabajando para la Máquina - Fragments of life and death from a content moderator' is prominently displayed above.

🚨NEW INQUIRY!
Barcelona-based content moderator Horacio Espinosa translates his workplace ethnography into a heartbreaking yet powerful zine.
If you use social media, you'll want to read and share this: data-workers.org/horacio-en/

This is a good opportunity to remind everyone that all pieces in the DWI can be used as classroom material.
Our students deserve to know that chatbots in their favorite social media and messaging apps rely on precarized workers.

➡️ data-workers.org/france/

People sharing with LLMs, but it's actually gig workers behind the scene.This shouldn't be legal!

"Workers impersonating AIs have to work at impossible paces and follow ever-changing rules and restrictions that censor and standardize the personal and human style they were precisely hired for."

Comics offer a powerful way to teach about the political economy of “AI” systems and the human labor upon which these technologies rely. #EduSky

Illustrated cover image titled “Behind the Face of AI,” showing a split face: one half is a tired human with a worried expression, the other half is a glowing robot face. The contrast suggests a human hidden behind an artificial intelligence persona, set against a blue comic-style background.

🚨NEW INQUIRY! - Behind the Face of AI🚨

In this short comic, two data workers describe their work impersonating an “AI” chatbot for a major social media platform. Sleepless nights, penalties for sounding “too human,” and emotional drain are just a few of the job hazards.

➡️ data-workers.org/france

Illustration of a silhouette struggling to lift a large, cracked TikTok logo, symbolizing the burden of content moderation. Background with faded TikTok logos, title "Behind the For You" at the top.

🚨 NEW INQUIRY!!

A Brazilian former TikTok moderator, pseudonymized as Lúcio, analyzes the systems designed to extract ever-growing productivity from content moderators and how they operate to harm workers.

Download and read the report at data-workers.org/lucio/

"Many of us believed we were simultaneously impersonating chatbots and teaching them how to replace us."

The Emotional Labor Behind AI Intimacy, by Michael Geoffrey Asia. Imagine confiding your most private fantasies to what you believe is an unfeeling algorithm that cannot judge or remember. Now imagine that on the other side of that conversation is a man sitting in a...

🚨NEW INQUIRY!

Imagine sharing your private fantasies with what you believe is a bot that cannot judge or remember. Just that, on the other side, is a man in a one-room home in Nairobi, pretending to be an AI companion.

That man is Michael, and this is his story: data-workers.org/michael/

Cover of the essay. It depicts a Black man, visibly tired and sad, holding a bleading heart that reads The Emotional Labor Behind AI Intimacy by Michael Geoffrey Asia.

Today, DWI publishes a powerful essay by @mgasia.bsky.social, who works impersonating an AI sex companion: data-workers.org/michael/

This piece offers a rare glimpse into the psychological and economic realities behind one of the fastest-growing sectors: AI-assisted intimacy.

How We Made Data Workers' Inquiry, by Milagros Miceli This piece traces how Data Workers‘ Inquiry came to life: not as a project with clear answers, but as a messy, stubborn attempt to put research in the hands of the people living the realities research...

How the change we need happens: The amazing @dataworkersinquiry.bsky.social with @milamiceli.bsky.social carving out "a space where data workers could investigate their own exploitation, tell their stories in their own words, organize, and fight—on their own terms."

data-workers.org/about/how-to...

If you are interested in the methodology behind the Data Workers' Inquiry Project (@dataworkersinquiry.bsky.social), this is the paper for you.

Research doesn't have to be exploitative.👇🏽

In sum, this work is not only a methodological account but a proposal for reorienting AI research toward worker-led knowledge rather than extraction.

Read the full article here: ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AI...

Organizing Across Borders, by Joan Kinyua The Data Labelers Association is developing mutual support structures and fighting for better working conditions. This inquiry recounts our path to founding it and acknowledges our ongoing partnership...

Finally, WIRM fosters what Gramsci called "organic intellectuals" embedded in the material conditions and collective struggles of their class. It cultivates networks of solidarity and tools for analysis generated from within worker communities.
See for instance: data-workers.org/DLA/

Data Workers' Inquiry - Data Workers' Inquiry Data Workers' Inquiry

Second, we bring this approach into the AI domain. WIRM provides a way to illuminate the human labor underpinning AI systems while allowing workers to define the terms of that illumination.
Our repository is proof of that: data-workers.org#Inquiries

Table summarizing WIRM's phases and steps, linked to their respective challenges and tensions.

First, we systematize Workers’ Inquiry as a Research Methodology (WIRM). We focus on its political grounding, its architecture, and its operationalization, offering a step-by-step guide, examples, and a discussion of challenges and tensions.

Proceedings of the Eighth AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES2025) Methodological Considerations for Centering Workers’ Epistemic Authority in AIResearchMilagros Miceli1, 2, 3, Adio-Adet Dinika1, Krystal Kauffman1, Camilla Salim Wagner2, 3,Laurenz Sachenbacher2, 3, Alex Hanna1, Timnit Gebru11The Distributed AI Research Institute2Weizenbaum-Institute3Technische Universit ̈at Berlinmila@dair-institute.org, adio@dair-institute.org, krystal@dair-institute.org, camilla.salim.wagner@tu-berlin.de,l.sachenbacher@tu-berlin.de, alex@dair-institute.org, timnit@dair-institute.org

📣New paper!
Thrilled to share the methodological recipe for @dataworkersinquiry.bsky.social in this article co-authored with @adiod.bsky.social @krystalkauffman.bsky.social Camilla Salim Wagner, Laurenz Sachenbacher @alexhanna.bsky.social & @timnitgebru.bsky.social

👉 ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AI...

Amazon is Building a Surveillance Empire on the Backs of Delivery Drivers. A new report from the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) exposes the dark underbelly of technology-driven workplace surveillance.” Above the text is an old school television with an antenna featuring a surveillance snapshot from a camera inside of an Amazon delivery van. The Amazon logo is upside down and is a frown. Around the television are disembodied eyes and ears.

🚨NEW🚨 from DAIR:

Today we are releasing "Driven Down", a new report on how workplace technology enables Amazon to steal wages, hide labor,
intensify poor working conditions, and evade responsibility.

Read the full report here: drive.google.com/file/d/1yBxy...

A lack of security and protection is a major part of data workers’ lives.
Read/watch excerpts from our collaborators — Oskarina, Ranta, and Alexis — on this topic.

Stories of data annotators and content moderators in Nairobi, Kenya

Documentary by @dataworkersinquiry.bsky.social #AI

peertube.dair-institute.org/w/gRTuLGE6VJ...

The DWI team attended this year’s INDL-8 Conference! Laurenz and Camilla shared theoretical and methodological insights on Data Workers’ Inquiry, while our amazing collaborators Kauna and Ephantus led a powerful panel on workers organizing and unionizing. 💪

Contenta de que perfiles como el de @milamiceli.bsky.social sea reconocido como uno de los más influyentes en temas de IA time.com/collections/...

Su trabajo en @dataworkersinquiry.bsky.social ha arrojado luz sobre condiciones laborales de personas que trabajan en la sombra de la IA,en lo NO mágico

Who is Really Fueling your #AI? Join us on September 17 to discuss precarization and resistance in #datawork, with the @dataworkersinquiry.bsky.social, @milamiceli.bsky.social and @superrrnetwork.bsky.social. Don't miss your chance to meet some of the shadow workforce behind AI. buff.ly/dHMHXPV

The Data Workers' Inquiry The Data Workers' Inquiry is a global, radically participatory research initiative spanning nine countries across five continents.

Richard Mathenge, Mophat Okinyi & Kauna Malgwi were on the TIME/100 list. Fasica Berhane's story won the True Story award. Joan Kinyua & others created the Data Labelers Association. Kauna is working on trauma-aware mental health intervention. See more at
www.dair-institute.org/projects/dat...

A black and white art showing a Black woman with an afro strapped on a chair and what looks like ghosts haunting her and surrounding her.

Screenshot of Kauna's inquir, "A Mental Health Intervention for Data Workers" with art showing a red silhouette in front of a screen.

Screenshot of the inquiry which says "If I Had Another job, I Would Not Accept Data Annotation Tasks". And another screenshot of a documentary titled "Annotate to Educate: The Dual life of a Syrian Student & Data Annotator"

I thought the project was cool when Mila told me about the idea, but I didn’t understand how expansive it was going to be until I saw elements of the repository at data-workers.org. Just look at the diversity and quality of outputs: depth reports, animated shorts, documentaries, podcasts and more.

Mila is on the TIME 100/AI list because of her work on the Data Workers Inquiry project (@dataworkersinquiry.bsky.social)

She was tired of writing *about* data workers, which is how one is supposed to conduct research in academia.

Timnit believed in me and my vision even before I was able to put it in words. I’m incredibly grateful to @dairinstitute.bsky.social for giving @dataworkersinquiry.bsky.social a home and to Timnit for her leadership, generosity, trust and support❤️