Ai colonialism and the hidden workers: Making the human cost of autonomous systems tangible
Hanna risberg
Hochschule Luzern
While AI is often presented as autonomous and technologically neutral, it depends on the repetitive and low-paid work of millions of data workers performing tasks such as content moderation, data labelling, and dataset cleaning. The installation AI Colonialism and the Hidden Workers makes that hidden labor visible. Combining global labor platform data with workers lived experiences, it examines labor exploitation as a dimension of AI Colonialism. Through spatial and affective visualization, it brings these hidden workers into the room, making the human costs behind AI systems visible and emotionally perceptible.
