AI Empire and Vestiges of the Plantation

There is an inherited global hierarchy that persists in occupying the vestiges of old empires, resisting every effort to address inherited inequality and intergenerational immobility. In the Silicon Age, AI research initiatives restructure and embed for-profit companies within non-profit organisations to achieve innovation. This wizardry is rarely outside the reliance on large amounts of cheap labour and scarce water resources to assemble the AI models that provide instant zero-click searches and summaries.

Four centuries of atrocities committed in pursuit of the silver coins that multiplied on the sold horizon-driven by greed and often under the guise of civilising missions-were once believed by some to be divinely ordained, and sanctified by papal edict.

The West Indies is central to the modern world. It is here that the modern world as we know it was formed. Intersections define this civilisation: the dreadful encounters with Europe during conquest and dehumanisation of the Aztecs and Mayans of the Yucatán, along with their resistance; the enslaved First Nation peoples on the Caura encomienda in Trinidad; the submarine and subterranean silences of those trafficked in tinkling leg irons during saltwater slavery; and the countless who were tricked into the holds of ships, their eyes welling with water, to become imported labour in Golconda from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Northeast Brazil, with its iconic centre in Bahia, New Orleans and all of the eastern littoral of North America, labelled as Plantation America, constitute, along with the Island-Caribbean, a geo-cultural area that houses a civilisation with its own inner rationality.

To transcend the margins of hate, intolerance, discrimination, racial arrogance, class exclusivity, and cultural denigration-the legacy of that dark past-we must mindfully remember Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, in his address to the United Nations General Assembly on 4 October 1963.

He reminded the world that: Until the philosophy which holds one race superior, and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited, and abandoned. Until the colour of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes. Until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race. Until that day. The dreams of lasting peace, world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained!”

Empires have always draped their conquests with a pall of progress. In the hinterlands and colonial backwaters, data labelling factories bustle with outsourced workers who annotate data and moderate content. It is done under the guise of a civilising mission. Buried deep beneath the spectre of AI are the Data Labelling overcrowded barracoons overflowing with annotation workers.

This hidden and exploited workforce is the lifeblood of the AI industry. By 2027, it is estimated to be worth $407 billion. These annotation workers label images, short videos, and text to allow AI systems to recognise patterns and make forecasts. Once deployed, large-scale AI models need continuous investment in data labelling, refinement, and real-world testing.

In some cases, annotation workers are denied access to performance feedback, and this opacity impedes their ability to improve or contest job losses and pay cuts. Some data labellers also work as independent contractors. They lack access to healthcare and other benefits, as they are not classified as “workers”, which would entitle them to minimum wage, holiday pay, and rest breaks after logging into the App.

Huge data centres threaten the precious water resources of peripheral states. Like the old empires, the opulence of the new AI empire is built on resource extraction and labour exploitation. M23 is a company of insurgents in Rubaya, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The battalion controls the largest supply of coltan on earth. In the hills of Rubaya, like ants following a pheromone trail, the miners ferry bulging sacks of crushed rocks along narrow ledges cut into the muddy slope.

The labourers haul coltan ore that will be loaded onto motorbikes and transported to seaports for shipping to Asia. There, the stones are processed into tantalum, a heat-resistant metal that fetches £300 a kilogram to satisfy demand from makers of GPUs used in the AI industry.

Just over fifteen per cent of the world’s coltan is quarried out of the earth manually by the penniless locals for a few dollars per day. The mine is a prize for the M23 rebel forces in a long-running conflict. In the Age of AI, the prevailing narrative is that AI is a tool for advancement-from accelerating drug development and enhancing diagnostics to AI-powered procurement that can boost productivity.

Superintelligence is expected to facilitate sustainable development as it creates a more sustainable and equitable future. In Latin America and the Caribbean, understanding the trajectory of AI advancement and how it will impact the region in the future calls for critical interrogation.