● Covered by 1 source · 1 reportMedium impact1 negative
Refugees in Kenya face dwindling pay for AI-related tech work amid opaque compensation models
Key points
- Refugees in Kakuma camp use AI tools like ChatGPT for tasks for companies like RWS's AOP Connect.
- Compensation is shifting from guaranteed wages to discretionary rewards, often below maximums.
- Refugees report declining pay and lack of transparency regarding their earnings.
- This model benefits tech companies with cheap labor for AI dataset development.
Refugees Engaged in AI-Related Work
Refugees in the Kakuma camp in Kenya are performing tasks for tech companies, including using AI tools like ChatGPT for research and translation. One refugee, Grace, used ChatGPT to translate Christian hymns for AOP Connect, a crowdsourced research platform owned by British AI enterprise software company RWS. This work involves researching details like translators, authors, and denominations based on the AI-generated translations.
Shift to Discretionary Rewards and Declining Pay
Compensation for this work is increasingly moving away from guaranteed wages towards discretionary rewards. RWS documents indicate that workers could receive up to $500 as a 'discretionary reward' if their work meets quality criteria. However, refugees are not guaranteed wages, and many earn significantly less than the maximum without clear explanations, according to Asha Luka Abdallah of the Solidarity Initiative for Refugees (SIR).
Exploitation Concerns and Lack of Transparency
Interviews with over two dozen refugees reveal that while tech companies benefit from cheap labor to build powerful AI tools, the refugees' pay, which was already low, is diminishing. The shrinking number of opportunities forces some to accept potential 'rewards' over guaranteed wages. Bahana Hydrogene, who established SIR's digital skills programs, highlighted the opaque arrangements and lack of transparent answers from companies as a significant concern.
Industry Context
Remote jobs like content moderation and data annotation have been promoted by UN agencies and tech companies as mutually beneficial, offering income to refugees and cheap labor to companies. However, the current trend suggests that only tech companies are clearly benefiting, building AI datasets on the work of precarious workers in low-income countries.
✨ This summary was generated by AI from the outlets' reporting listed below. It is not independently verified and may contain errors — check the original sources. How BrevFeed works →
The daily brief
One email each morning: the day's tech stories, clustered across outlets and summarized. No account needed.
One email a day. Unsubscribe in one click, any time.
Today's brief
Spend a few minutes, get the whole day. Every topic's top stories in one hands-free rundown — listen, watch, or read the transcript.
▶ Play today's brief
New every morning, and the back catalogue is archived by date.
Reporting from
Refugees in Kenya's Kakuma camp are performing AI-related tasks for tech companies, often through platforms like AOP Connect, but are experiencing declining pay and a shift from guaranteed wages to discretionary rewards. This trend raises concerns about exploitation as tech companies benefit from cheap labor while refugees struggle with unstable income and lack of transparency.