The political tensions between Venezuela and the United States are at an all-time high, after news of strikes on Caracas and the alleged capture of President Maduro and his wife. The recent escalation follows years of economic sanctions and a deep divide between the two countries.
And yet, Venezuela has massively supplied cheap data work to US-based technology producers throughout all these years. Through digital labour platforms, an educated but impoverished workforce made its way to (the bottom of) the supply chains of US-directed artificial intelligence (AI).
Since about 2017, high inflation, increasing scarcity of even basic goods, and widespread poverty have pushed Venezuelans to work for international platforms that pay in US dollars, albeit at low rates. They have come to constitute a large reservoir for technology producers, mainly (though not only) in the United States. Known for their willingness to accept even the lowest pay rates in the data work market, Venezuelan workers have annotated hundreds of thousands of videos and images for the development of (for example) self-driving vehicles. Ironically, the very policies of Chavist governments – from Chávez himself to Maduro – made this possible. Cheap access to electricity and promotion of digital literacy, including through the widespread distribution of locally produced computers (‘Canaima’) to students and schoolchildren, provided people with the necessary infrastructure to perform data work. Even outdated and malfunctioning, these equipments played a crucial role in enabling widespread Venezuelan participation to the AI pipeline.
For Venezuelan workers, platforms labour has constituted a a resilience strategy against adverse local conditions. Participation has never been easy owing to frequent power cuts, slow internet connection, and aging devices, not to mention the difficulty of working almost entirely in English. The high educational levels and computing skills of many workers (including experienced professionals and science/technology students), and embeddedness in densely knit networks of support offered solutions. At the same time, work on platforms is not without challenges, and all Venezuelan data workers have experienced some form of disrespect. Being paid less than peers in neighbouring countries, or even being offered fewer tasks than these foreign peers, are examples of this. At some point, they had to endure a widespread perception that they do not work well. Resisting against international platforms can be more challenging than bypassing local restrictions, and Venezuelan workers limited themselves to occasional acts of minor cheating involving only very few of them.
Venezuelans’ resolve to move out of the crisis and the networked relationships that sustain each of them against hardship have made them massively present, as ‘uninvited protagonists,’ in international data work platforms. Conversely, some AI companies and platforms (from the Global North in general, and from the United States specifically) targeted Venezuela deliberately, not much for the qualities and skills of its highly educated population, but for its low cost at a time of crisis. These platform-mediated encounters enabled short-term solutions, but haven’t raised Venezuela out of poverty, and haven’t ensured a durable provision of high-quality data for AI.
What comes next inside Venezuela is deeply unclear, but unfortunately, nothing (for now) suggests any recognition of the role of these workers in the technology industry, or any opportunity to reshape its outputs in more equitable and respectful ways.
Data Big and Small 