Let's say you’re on Twitter, browsing through your news feed. The reason why the feed you get is devoid of content that might be violent, racist or potentially upsetting, is because people spread across the globe, are on hand to sort through anything that might be deemed as dangerous or harmful. These are people you will never meet, who you probably don't even know exist, but they are deeply interwoven into the digital infrastructure that you use every day. Behind the facade of modern AI lies an army of workers, creating data sets to train machine learning, and quietly filling in when it falls down.
In the first of three episodes, we turn to the world of Microwork platforms, looking at the story of one worker performing content moderation on the platform Appen. We hear from Dr Kelle Howson to provide some context and hear the story of Dr Fei Fei Lee, who transformed the way in which AI is made forever.
You can contact Robbie via email with any thoughts, questions or suggestions at robbie.warin@oii.ox.ac.uk
Fei Fei Lee gave a fascinating and quite brilliant Ted Talk about the Image Net project which you can view here
