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Feeding the Machine

The Hidden Human Labour Powering AI

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Feeding the Machine

By: James Muldoon, Mark Graham, Callum Cant
Narrated by: Orlando Wells
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Summary

Big Tech has sold us the illusion that artificial intelligence is a frictionless technology that will bring wealth and prosperity to humanity. But hidden beneath this smooth surface lies the grim reality of a precarious global workforce of millions that labour under often appalling conditions to make AI possible. Feeding the Machine presents an urgent, riveting investigation of the intricate network of organisations that maintain this exploitative system, revealing the untold truth of AI.

Based on hundreds of interviews and thousands of hours of fieldwork over more than a decade, this book shows us the lives of the workers often deliberately concealed from view and the systems of power that determine their future. It shows how AI is an extraction machine that churns through ever-larger datasets and feeds off humanity’s labour and collective intelligence to power its algorithms. Feeding the Machine is a call to arms against this exploitative system and details what we need to do, individually and collectively, to fight for a more just digital future.

 Computer Science History & Culture Labor & Industrial Relations Machine Theory & Artificial Intelligence Politics & Government Technology & Society Technology Artificial Intelligence

Critic Reviews

"[A] call to arms to take control over our digital futures: build worker power, hold big tech accountable, and create a better understanding of how these systems work"
"Feeding the Machine may just be the most important book to be written in the current fever of AI publishing. It shines a light into the darkest corners of this ‘revolution’, revealing the enormous human cost behind the giant servers and grinding labour farms that exploit and abuse the human spirit in order to provide a technology that itself exploits and abuses the human spirit. I urge anyone who uses, harnesses or leverages AI to read this and consider. What an important book" (STEPHEN FRY)
"I had no idea of the dark, tangled world of human exploitation and corporate greed that is fuelling the growth of AI. Here we meet people working impossible hours for pitiful wages – just so we can get our orders a couple of hours earlier, while some billionaire gets richer. If you think – as I once did – that the internet is a kind of ‘free lunch’ you need to read this extraordinary and essential book" (BRIAN ENO)
"The darker side of the shiny AI era is the subject of Feeding the Machine . . . The authors delve into seven archetypal jobs in the AI supply chain"
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