Kenyan Data Annotators Allegedly Exposed to Graphic Content for OpenAI's AI

November 1, 2021

Kenyan contractors working for Sama AI allegedly faced excessive workloads annotating potentially disturbing content for OpenAI's generative AI systems like ChatGPT. These contractors were reportedly compensated poorly and their contract was terminated prematurely by Sama AI. This incident underscores the importance of trustworthy AI practices, safe and secure AI governance, and Project Cerebellum's role in preventing harm through its AI incident database.

For those interested in shaping safe and secure AI practices and contributing to Project Cerebellum, JOIN US. This incident also serves as a Map case for the HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM, emphasizing the need for robust guardrails in AI governance.

Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.673, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.664, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.661, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: openai
Alleged developer: openai
Alleged harmed parties: kenyan-sama-ai-employees

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/450

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.