*This is a human centric story on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Ethics.* *An interesting piece by Time magazine on the role and dangers of teaching AI, where Kenyan workers were used to train ChatGPT models.* *I have left the graphical parts out. For anyone who want to read through, the link is shared at the end. But this shows how we are creating psychologically disturbed workers in our communities. How are these workers integrated back to the community without being damaged?* Documents reviewed by TIME show that OpenAI signed three contracts worth about $200,000 in total with Sama in late 2021 to label textual descriptions of sexual abuse, hate speech, and violence. Around three dozen workers were split into three teams, one focusing on each subject. Three employees told TIME they were expected to read and label between 150 and 250 passages of text per nine-hour shift. Those snippets could range from around 100 words to well over 1,000. All of the four employees interviewed by TIME described being mentally scarred by the work. Although they were entitled to attend sessions with “wellness” counselors, all four said these sessions were unhelpful and rare due to high demands to be more productive at work. Two said they were only given the option to attend group sessions, and one said their requests to see counselors on a one-to-one basis instead were repeatedly denied by Sama management. *Is Samasource breaking any local laws by handling data that is proscribed by several acts in Kenya? Read on.* In February 2022, Sama and OpenAI’s relationship briefly deepened, only to falter. That month, Sama began pilot work for a separate project for OpenAI: collecting sexual and violent images—some of them illegal under U.S. law—to deliver to OpenAI. The work of labeling images appears to be unrelated to ChatGPT*.* In a statement, an OpenAI spokesperson did not specify the purpose of the images the company sought from Sama, but said labeling harmful images was “a necessary step” in making its AI tools safer. (OpenAI also builds image-generation <https://time.com/collection/best-inventions-2022/6225486/dall-e-2/> technology.) In February, according to one billing document reviewed by TIME, Sama delivered OpenAI a sample batch of 1,400 images. Some of those images were categorized as “C4”—OpenAI’s internal label denoting child sexual abuse—according to the document. Also included in the batch were “C3” images (including bestiality, rape, and sexual slavery,) and “V3” images depicting graphic detail of death, violence or serious physical injury, according to the billing document. OpenAI paid Sama a total of $787.50 for collecting the images, the document shows. Questions to ask ourselves: *Who should review AI systems if not humans? * *How should the humans be treated?* *What laws govern these new spheres of concern?* *The silver lining is that Samasource is working to provide a safer environment for its workers, and to an extension the Kenyan public. It has terminated contracts from projects that are traumatizing its employees. The sad bit is that some employees were also laid off due to lost revenue*. Samasource and ChatGPT: OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour to Make ChatGPT Less Toxic https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/?s=09 -- Best Regards, ______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva