Help Wanted: HUMANS ONLY

Help Wanted: HUMANS ONLY is an interactive double-sided installation that focuses on “ghost work” in the age of AI. The first side invites viewers to engage in the labeling of images as ghost workers do; the second side is a collection of personal experiences and images sourced from these workers, mixed with AI-generated responses from those looking to make a quick buck.

Project Video

Abstract

Help Wanted: HUMANS ONLY is a dual-sided installation that explores the relationship between employer and employee in the age of AI. The work draws from the experiences of “ghost workers”: exploited workers who perform repetitive tasks such as labeling image and video datasets for AI training. Because this labor often remains invisible and uncredited, AI can appear to function independently, as if no human work were involved. The first side of the installation invites viewers to label images themselves, placing them in the position of these hidden workers. The second side presents personal writing and images collected from employees of Amazon Mechanical Turk, a platform used to outsource small digital tasks. Intended to offer a glimpse into the workers’ humanity, these materials instead revealed a more complicated reality. When asked to describe their private experiences, some “Turkers” used AI to complete the task. What began as an exposé of the exploitation behind AI systems became a reflection on a broader condition: one in which human labor is both hidden by automation and increasingly outsourced to it.

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