Adopting Ethical Standards and Fair Practices to Inform Platform Regulation and Protect AI Data Workers in the Global South
Uplifting the Workers, Shining a Light on the Invisible Labor Powering AI Technologies is a series of conversations to grow awareness about the human costs of AI innovation and to create a space where people in the cultural memory professions can engage in critical and caring discussions about the broader impact of AI technology. The series will feature workers’ rights activists, community organizers, AI data workers, scholars, and cultural memory practitioners. As the unrestrained development and adoption of artificial intelligence continues to impact all sectors of society, it is important for cultural memory workers to acknowledge the potential impact to our work but to also engage this new reality in critical ways that demonstrate our capacity to care for and advocate on behalf of vulnerable people. We must intentionally demonstrate our awareness of the labor exploitation, environmental harm, and other human costs underpinning AI innovation. And if cultural memory workers plan to bring AI technology into our work, we should be open to discussing how we might resist the technocapitalist agenda for AI use and be prepared to offer alternative models that are ethical, will not lead to the displacement of workers, and that will respect the rights of communities to own their cultural production.
Date/Time: Friday, June 19th, 10am-11:30am EST
Panelist: Adio-Adet Dineka, Political Scientist
Moderator: Dr. Meredith D. Clark
Adio is a political scientist specializing in platform labour and platform governance. He received his PhD from the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS) in Germany, focusing on critiquing techno-optimistic narratives of platform labour in Sub-Saharan Africa. At DAIR, Adio’s research examines the often invisibilized labour behind AI system development, emphasizing the importance of ethical considerations in AI creation. His work combines academic rigor with insights from fieldwork across multiple African countries. Through his research, Adio aims to highlight the overlooked human contributions to AI and advocate for fair practices and ethical standards in the digital economy. His broader interests include platform regulation, workers’ rights in the tech industry, and promoting responsible AI development that considers its socio-economic impacts in the Global South.
Meredith D. Clark, Ph.D. (she/her), is a recovering journalist and an associate professor of race and political communication in the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media. Her book, “We Tried to Tell Y’all: Black Twitter and the Rise of Digital Counternarratives,” was released in 2025. She is a two-time graduate of Florida A&M University (B.A., political science, 2002; M.S., newspaper journalism, 2006) and earned her Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2014. Her work has been published in prominent journals such as Social Media & Society, New Media & Society, and the International Journal of Press and Politics. She has also received research grants from organizations including the Knight Foundation, the Democracy Fund, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Clark’s award-winning dissertation on Black Twitter landed her on The Root 100, the news website’s list of the most influential African Americans in the country, in 2015.
