OII | The Hidden Human Cost of AI: In conversation with Professor Mark Graham
Professor Mark Graham highlights the hidden human cost of AI and shares observations from his latest book 'Feeding the Machine: the Hidden Human Labour Powering AI'.
James Muldoon, Mark Graham and Callum Cant: ‘AI feeds off the work of human beings’
The Fairwork trio talk about their new book on the ‘extraction machine’, exposing the repetitive labour, often in terrible conditions, that big tech is using to create artificial intelligence
Workers powering the AI industry face terrible conditions, but they shouldn’t have to – interview
Mark Graham, founder of the Fairwork initiative, notes that most of the labour in the AI supply chain is data work primarily done in low-income countries in poor conditions.
Why office workers are turning against AI
Whether or not you like AI at work ultimately boils down to a question of power.
The real AI economy is being built by ordinary people
Far from Silicon Valley pitch decks, workers across Asia and Africa are bypassing tech industry hype to quietly rewire their daily jobs — one prompt, workflow, and local problem at a time.
For the love of God, stop calling your AI a co-worker | TechCrunch
A growing number of startups are anthropomorphizing AI to build trust fast -- and soften its threat to human jobs.
AI Is Turning Workplaces Into Hopeless Gridlock
Office workers find that they are being flooded by AI generated workslop that's paradoxically making them less productive.
The hidden cost of AI: In conversation with Professor Mark Graham
The hidden cost of AI: Countless humans toil in monotonous, low-paid jobs to power the algorithms behind our tech. Professor Mark Graham exposes this digital sweatshop, calling for accountability and worker rights.
What Workers Want from AI Automation
Workers around the world are not getting what they want from AI
A survey of workers in 60 countries found that a majority of those facing the threat of AI-driven job loss do not trust companies or governments to manage the transition fairly.
Nathan Witkin on Twitter / X
Does anyone disagree that pretty much every piece of empirical evidence we have about actually existing AI points toward a labor-augmenting technology with a more-or-less ordinary risk profile (no worse than cars, guns, nuclear power, social media, etc.)?On the labor front, the…— Nathan Witkin (@NateWitkin) October 5, 2026
Bosses Are Blowing More Money on AI Agents Than It'd Cost Them to Just Pay Human Workers
Some organizings are finding themselves spending more on AI token fees than they do paying human salaries.
What Does 'Human-Centred AI' Mean?
While it seems sensible that human-centred artificial intelligence (AI) means centring "human behaviour and experience," it cannot be any other way. AI, I argue, is usefully seen as a relationship between technology and humans where it appears that artifacts can perform, to a greater or lesser extent, human cognitive labour. This is evinced using examples that juxtapose technology with cognition, inter alia: abacus versus mental arithmetic; alarm clock versus knocker-upper; camera versus vision; and sweatshop versus tailor. Using novel definitions and analyses, sociotechnical relationships can be analysed into varying types of: displacement (harmful), enhancement (beneficial), and/or replacement (neutral) of human cognitive labour. Ultimately, all AI implicates human cognition; no matter what. Obfuscation of cognition in the AI context -- from clocks to artificial neural networks -- results in distortion, in slowing critical engagement, perverting cognitive science, and indeed in limiting our ability to truly centre humans and humanity in the engineering of AI systems. To even begin to de-fetishise AI, we must look the human-in-the-loop in the eyes.
What Does 'Human-Centred AI' Mean?
While it seems sensible that human-centred artificial intelligence (AI) means centring "human behaviour and experience," it cannot be any other way. AI, I argue, is usefully seen as a relationship between technology and humans where it appears that artifacts can perform, to a greater or lesser extent, human cognitive labour. This is evinced using examples that juxtapose technology with cognition, inter alia: abacus versus mental arithmetic; alarm clock versus knocker-upper; camera versus vision; and sweatshop versus tailor. Using novel definitions and analyses, sociotechnical relationships can be analysed into varying types of: displacement (harmful), enhancement (beneficial), and/or replacement (neutral) of human cognitive labour. Ultimately, all AI implicates human cognition; no matter what. Obfuscation of cognition in the AI context -- from clocks to artificial neural networks -- results in distortion, in slowing critical engagement, perverting cognitive science, and indeed in limiting our ability to truly centre humans and humanity in the engineering of AI systems. To even begin to de-fetishise AI, we must look the human-in-the-loop in the eyes.
AI as a Tool for the Mental Load | Brittany Ellich | Offprint
AI didn't make me faster at tasks. It took over the tracking, the invisible remembering that runs a household, and gave me back creative energy I forgot I had
