DiPLab’s Antonio A. Casilli was invited to speak on Pillole di Eta Beta, the technology programme broadcast on Italy’s RAI Radio 3, in an episode that opens with a striking new phenomenon: in Los Angeles, people are being paid to simply live their lives on camera. Wearing body-mounted cameras and sensor bracelets, workers film themselves doing household chores. Thousands of US workers have already been recruited for this work, paid a few dozen dollars for hours of first-person footage that becomes raw material for the next generation of autonomous machines. For Casilli, what is unfolding in Los Angeles is the latest iteration of a phenomenon that has involved millions of workers across Asia, Africa, and Latin America for over a decade: training algorithms, labeling images, moderating content. A digital proletariat that the technology industry systematically erases from its triumphant narrative. And yet without it, none of its products would function. The episode also raises a harder question about users. Niantic, the company behind Pokémon Go, recently sold 30 billion video sequences, captured from players navigating the real world through augmented reality, to a robotics delivery company. Millions of people filmed streets, parks, and shops without knowing their footage would end up training autonomous delivery systems.

Antonio Casilli from the DiPLab appeared on Rai Radio 3 Scienza to discuss RentAHuman, a job listing platform that claims to be operated by “AI agents.” Casilli characterized the platform as potentially misleading: a service that markets itself with the rhetoric of artificial intelligence but may in reality rely entirely on human labor. He suggested that the site’s goal could be to attract investors with promises of cutting-edge technology, while offering little substantive innovation. The conversation raises broader questions about the way AI is leveraged in contemporary digital platforms. RentAHuman exemplifies a recurring pattern in which the promise of automation is used as a marketing tool, often obscuring the actual labor dynamics behind the service. For those interested in hearing Casilli’s analysis firsthand, the episode is available as a podcast:

#stopthegenocideingaza🇵🇸 Il giornalista Antonio Mazzeo: #Gaza, #Palestine #Italian #Genocide APPROFONDIMENTO SU QUELLO CHE STA ACCADENDO A GAZA E IN TUTTO IL TERRITORIO PALESTINESE OCCUPATO, SUL GENOCIDIO, SULLE COMPLICITÀ DELLE AZIENDE E SUI TRAFFICI DI ARMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WyX-8NxgIc&t=1350s

#stopthegenocideingaza🇵🇸 Il giornalista Antonio Mazzeo: #Gaza, #Palestine #Italian #Genocide QUELLO CHE STA ACCADENDO A GAZA E IN TUTTO IL TERRITORIO PALESTINESE OCCUPATO, IL GENOCIDIO, LE COMPLICITÀ DELLE AZIENDE E I TRAFFICI DI ARMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WyX-8NxgIc

Italy’s national broadcaster Rai 1 has shined a light on a crucial but often overlooked aspect of artificial intelligence in their program “Codice.” Their recent report reveals the essential truth: AI is built on real human work. As you might expect, this report bears the fingerprints of our team at DiPLab Rai 1, with DiPLab’s co-founder Antonio Casilli being interviewed among the experts of AI supply chains.

Antonio Casilli, professor of Sociology at the Polytechnic Institute of Paris and co-director of the DiPLab research group, recently featured on Italy’s national radio program Eta Beta, hosted by Massimo Cerofolini on Rai Radio1, to discuss the dark side of artificial intelligence. In the interview, Casilli shed light on the invisible workforce behind AI’s apparent automation—millions of precarious, underpaid workers across Africa, Asia, and South America who perform the “dirty work” powering AI systems. For mere pennies per hour, these digital laborers filter disturbing content including graphic violence and sexual abuse, annotate images and videos, correct algorithm errors, train self-driving cars, and even produce commissioned social media engagement. The DiPLab director, author of the award-winning book Waiting for Robots. The Hired Hands of Automation, also highlighted how everyday users unknowingly contribute free labor to improve AI models like American-made ChatGPT or Chinese-developed DeepSeek, further entrenching this exploitative system.