AI gig workers forced to collect personal data, including kid's pics, for Zuckerberg-backed company

They're the invisible workforce behind today's smartest machines. Now, gig workers are revealing what it's really like to train artificial intelligence for a company backed by Mark Zuckerberg.

According to the Guardian, contractors working for Scale AI, which is partly owned by Meta, describe a job that goes far beyond what many people imagine.

Workers said they were tasked with combing through social media profiles, tagging faces, locations, relationships, and even collecting copyrighted artwork to help build machine learning systems.

One worker described feeling uncomfortable when using pictures of children, but such images appeared in the training materials.

"I don't think people understood quite that there'd be somebody on a desk in a random state, looking at your [social media] profile, using it to generate AI data," one contractor said, per the Guardian.

Some assignments were even more unsettling. Workers reported transcribing explicit audio, labeling disturbing images, and reviewing sensitive content despite being told certain material wouldn't be included.

"A lot of us were really desperate," one worker explained. "Many people really needed this job, myself included, and really tried to make the best of a bad situation."

One artist confessed to a sense of "internalized shame and guilt" for "contributing directly to the automation of my hopes and dreams."

The report highlights a growing but often overlooked workforce behind AI, sometimes called "taskers," who perform the human labor that powers these systems.

At the same time, the rapid rise of AI carries impacts beyond labor concerns.

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Training and running large AI models requires massive amounts of electricity and water, which can strain local energy grids and increase costs for nearby communities. While AI has the potential to improve efficiency, its growth could also intensify resource demands if not carefully managed.

"As an aspiring human, it makes me angry at the system," one worker told the Guardian.

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