Labelers training AI say they're overworked, underpaid and exploited by big American tech companies

The familiar narrative is that artificial intelligence will take away human jobs: machine-learning will let cars, computers and chatbots teach themselves - making us humans obsolete. 

Well, that's not very likely, and we're gonna tell you why. There's a growing global army of millions toiling to make AI run smoothly. They're called "humans in the loop:" people sorting, labeling, and sifting reams of data to train and improve AI for companies like Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft and Google. It's gruntwork that needs to be done accurately, fast, and - to do it cheaply – it's often farmed out to places like Africa – 

We met Naftali Wambalo in Nairobi, Kenya, one of the main hubs for this kind of work. It's a country desperate for jobs… because of an unemployment rate as high as 67% among young people. So Naftali, father of two, college educated with a degree in mathematics, was elated to finally find work in an emerging field: artificial intelligence.

Naftali and digital workers like him, spent eight hours a day in front of a screen studying photos and videos, drawing boxes around objects and labeling them, teaching the AI algorithms to recognize them.

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