This fictional memorial of the future is an ode to the workers who train the models of generative intelligence. AI is a beast that guzzles energy, water, and, most important of all, human input. Beyond the magical algorithms, AI is built on trained data that requires human labour. Data labelling, described as the ‘grunt work’ consisting of training machine-learning models, happens regularly, yet invisibly. Far away from Silicon Valley or Shanghai, humans in remote places on Earth are shaping our interactions with emerging technology. Somewhere in rural India or the fishing towns of Venezuela, people sit in their tiny homes, glaring at their lit-up laptops chipping away at microtasks—anything from marking the area of trees or drawing the shape of a hand, both of which might lead to self-driving cars or remote-controlled surgeries in the future.

In this memorial, we see the countless faceless workers. We don’t know their names, where they come from or how they look. We only know the record of the tasks done and efficiency of the data trained. If you go through the memorial, you can start to see that work involves not only data annotating and labelling, but also livestreaming and coding. This aims to bring a sense of solidarity within the different hierarchies in the technological industry. White collar or blue-collar descriptions become undefined when compared to humongous capital accrued to the CEOs. All jobs tend to disabuse themselves of their titles or rung on the career ladder; in front of the machine, it all becomes human labour.

Credits
Concept and Artwork: Swarna Manjari
Animation: Beste Cebeci
Music:  Sound Effect by Pixabay Freesound Community

Video | 2025