The Humans behind AI

During The Humans Behind AI, the human aspect of artificial intelligence comes to light in the documentary Ghost Workers by Lisette Olsthoorn with an introduction by prof. dr. Claartje ter Hoeven. Who are these millions of platform workers who almost invisibly, often working from home, make raw data readable to AI systems? And what does this repetitive work, the absence of an office environment with collegial interaction and the lack of (financial) appreciation do to their well-being?

Claartje ter Hoeven is professor of Organizational Dynamics at Erasmus University Rotterdam and principal investigator of the ERC GHOSTWORK project. She researches the human work required to make artificial intelligence work. Millions of data workers worldwide perform tasks such as data cleaning and image labeling to train AI systems. Her research focuses on the often precarious working conditions of these workers.

As a filmmaker, Lisette Olshoorn is interested in staging interactions between people that reveal layers of shared experiences and political tensions. For her re-enactments, she works with both actors and the people themselves. For her film Ghost Workers, she invited six workers to share experiences on a film set where the participants' home offices were recreated. This film was made possible by the Erasmus Initiative Societal Impact of AI.

Digitally present: workers Carlo Arpini and Michaela Friederike Nick.