THE INATTENTION ECONOMY

A University of Michigan scholar examines the unrecognized labor that women of color have invested into the modern internet. The author profiles Kenyan women paid “two dollars an hour to train and clean ChatGPT by reading and labeling snippets of violent, racist, and sexist remarks.” These women feed developing AI models the data needed to help the models learn and grow. The author also profiles Navajo women who created “chips for calculators, transistor radios, and other early media devices.” A profile of Tila Tequila, who the author calls “the first influencer,” is also included. The author argues that the internet would not exist without the underpaid or unpaid invisible labor of women of color.

  • The technological horizon that marks the beginning of technologies that feel like a new epoch of machine intelligence is enabled and marked by the labor of women of color—labor that is strategically erased in some moments and hypervisible in others.
  • If you are holding a digital device in your hands, it was almost certainly touched by a woman of color before you, most likely the Southeast Asian woman or women who built it.
  • Navajo women in Shiprock, New Mexico, created chips for calculators, transistor radios, and other early media devices [that] was understood as creative cultural labor, and thus not labor….
📚 BookAddict’s Take: If you’re interested in the intersection of labor, technology, and social justice, this book sounds like an important read.

Source: Kirkus Reviews  | 
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