The Data Workers’ Inquiry is a community-based research project in which data workers join us as community researchers to lead their own inquiry in their respective workplaces. The community researchers guide the direction of the research, such that it is oriented towards their needs and goals of building workplace power but supported by formally trained qualitative researchers. We adapt Marx’s 1880 Workers’ Inquiry to the phenomenon of data workers who are both essential for contemporary AI applications yet precariously employed—if at all—and politically dispersed.
16 data workers in Venezuela, Kenya, Syria, Brazil and Germany conducting research with their colleagues in their respective workplaces and reporting on labor conditions and widespread practices in the AI industry.