Oxford Report Says AI Gig Workers Suffer from 'Unfair Working Conditions'

A recent Oxford report finds that some renowned AI companies exploit digital labor workers. With the rising demand for AI, it's surprising how some firms give unfair treatment to their employees just to keep up with the ever-evolving tech landscape.

AI Gig Workers Are Exploited

In an exclusive report shared by the University of Oxford's Internet Institute with TIME, some companies still deprived their workers of even the most basic labor rights.

According to the researchers, some companies such as Appen, Scale AI, and Amazon Mechanical Turk are engaging in this unfair setting.

The research describes that these digital work platforms are "still far from safeguarding basic standards of fair work."

While there's more money to earn in AI building because of the public hype, the people behind its creation are silently suffering from "unfair working conditions."

What the Researchers Discovered

The researchers conducted a survey where 752 AI gig workers from 94 countries were involved. The team conducted interviews with the company's managers. Additionally, the basis of the score relies on the following principles: fair pay, fair conditions, fair contracts, fair management, and fair representation.

The authors were surprised that even the most popular companies scored the lowest points including Workana, Microworkers, Freelancer, and Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Furthermore, the findings also suggest that no companies got a score above 5. If the score is perfect or 10 out of 10, that means that a digital platform is compliant with the bare minimum.

"We have very world-renowned platforms that are still among the worst scores. We still have a very big problem with platforms that are not acknowledging the need to improve their workers' conditions," Jonas Valente, the lead researcher on the so-called "cloud work" project said.

Another thing to take note of about the research is that there are cases of "unpaid labor." A new finding suggests that AI gig workers who dedicated 26.8% of their time to the tasks were not paid by their respective companies.

Some workers took unpaid tests while others risked taking meager pay just to enter the digital platforms.

While some companies such as Workana, PeoplePerHour, ScaleAI, Elharega, Freelancer, Clickworker, and Microworkers declined to comment on the research, other firms thought that this could pave the room for improvement.

As SoyFreelancer spokesperson says, the Oxford study gives a "good initiative" to the whole organization so it could further improve its quality service not just to the users, but more importantly to its workers.

Terawork and Comeup are two of the highest-scoring platforms which got 5 out of 10. The two firms acknowledged that they were placed above the other platforms because they made changes from the feedback they received from their people.

Comeup spokesperson said that the company still needs to give each worker ideal working conditions so other companies will follow.