Tracing the Displacement of Data Work in AI: A Political Economy of “Human-in-the-Loop”

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In this study, we trace the evolution of a data work team in an artificial intelligence (AI) startup in India. By bringing attention to data work, which is the indispensable work of preparing annotated datasets for training AI systems, conducted within a formal organisational set up, we underline: 1. how organisational approaches adopted to balance investor and client preferences shape work arrangements and spatial division of the data workers; 2. how relations between the data team and the ‘core’ technical team serve to invisibilise human labour in the production of AI; and 3. how increasing codification of data work leads to devaluation of data work within the organisation and deskilling of young data workers at large, making them vulnerable in choosing a meaningful career path of their choice. In tracing this trajectory of displacement of data workers employed in a formal sector, we show that the prevalent characterisation of data work as being invisible or precarious is not inherent to AI nor inevitable in its labour processes. Rather, it is produced through the specific embedding of AI production within the political economy of startup capitalism. Through this, we seek to recentre the discourse on AI and future-of-work away from deterministic projections of AI’s impact on work and towards the specific labour processes of AI and its implications for the skills and career trajectories of a young and growing workforce in the Global South.