Hi there --

Artificial intelligence (AI) is all the rage right now … to the point where Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is organizing “AI Insight Forums” with Big Tech CEOs to help the Senate figure out how to regulate AI.

While these forums are well-attended by wealthy investors and Big Tech executives, there’s an important voice that’s being drowned out: workers. Millions of data workers across the globe are training AI systems and AI systems are being used to surveil, manage, and assess millions of workers across the globe.

Big Tech corporations hype up advances in AI as ways they might improve their products or services, but the ugly truth is that they are using AI to pad their profit margins and exploit workers. Given how fast the field of AI is developing, we need to speak out NOW to protect workers’ rights.

So please sign the petition to Congress and demand that any AI-related legislation include protections for workers!

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The harms inflicted on workers in the AI industry are coming in two primary ways right now.

1. The unseen and underappreciated data workers who train these systems, the people giving AI the ability to discern a tree from a telephone pole, are being grossly underpaid. Reports have surfaced of workers – mostly American workers – earning wages far below the minimum, sometimes as low as $1.77 per hour, without any benefits whatsoever. This exploitation is not just a labor issue; it's a moral one, as a group supporting Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers has pointed out. [1]

2. AI is increasingly being used to monitor employees across industries in ways that undermine working conditions and reduce workplace safety. Reports have surfaced of Amazon using constant, invasive workplace surveillance to maintain control, force employees to work at an unsafe pace, and undermine their protected rights to speak out and take collective action. [2] Similarly, employees at Google and Walmart have alleged that their employers embedded browser extensions and covert listening devices – all powered by AI – to detect and quash union organizing activities. [3]

AI is quickly becoming a part of the workplace for just about everyone. And if we don’t speak out now and demand that Congress protect workers, millions of workers will be negatively affected.

So please speak out today and tell Congress to protect workers from AI abuses.

Thanks for taking action,

Nicole Gill
Co-founder and Executive Director
Accountable Tech

Chip in to support our work holding Big Tech accountable: CHIP IN

1. The Verge: Workers training AI demand protections from Congress.
2. Medium: Put Workers over Profits: End Worker Surveillance
3. Working Now and Then: Surveillance and Suppression of Union Activity

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