BiasMedium
Kenyan Data Annotators Reported Psychological Trauma from Labeling Graphic Text for ChatGPT Safety Systems
- Occurred
- Nov 1, 2021
- Published
- Jul 11, 2023
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
Sama data annotators in Nairobi, Kenya, reported lasting psychological trauma after labeling graphic sexual and violent text for OpenAI's content-moderation classifiers used in ChatGPT. Workers alleged low pay and inadequate psychological support; Sama disputed aspects of those accounts. The contract ended early, and former workers later petitioned Kenya's Parliament for stronger protections.
Developers
- OpenAI
- Large language model developers
- Chatbot developers
Deployers
- OpenAI
- Sama
Harmed parties
- Sama
- Employees of Sama
- Data annotators
- Sama data annotators in Kenya
Classification
Category confidence: 75%
Severity confidence: 80%
Rationale: Exploitation of low-wage workers in developing nations for AI training data raises ethical and fairness concerns.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8