Source: WIRED Daily
As AI companies scale, they're creating a new class of low-wage contract work—data labeling, content moderation, training models—that functions as the modern service job for people without specialized skills or capital. Labor arbitrage is shifting: not just outsourcing to cheaper geographies, but decomposing knowledge work into atomic tasks distributed globally to whoever will do them cheapest. This collapses the ladder that once led from service work to stability. AI gig work offers the same precarity and wage suppression as restaurant work, but with less community, benefits, or pathway forward.