Digital Labor Platforms as Infrastructure of Extractivism

arXiv:2609.37614v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This chapter examines how digital platforms, as infrastructures of extractivism in contemporary artificial intelligence, enable corporations to appropriate data and labour while concentrating value in core regions such as Silicon Valley. It proposes platform extractivism as a framework linking commodification, epistemic dominance, and reproduction through territory. Drawing on digital labour studies, Latin American critical thought, and mixed-methods research with Venezuelan and Colombian data workers, the chapter discusses how AI depends on precarious platform labour to produce, clean, annotate, and maintain data. It further shows how annotation systems normalize culturally specific categories, especially US norms, as universal knowledge, reproducing colonial hierarchies. Finally, it highlights how data work is sustained by unpaid reproductive labour, community networks, and material conditions that make workers available for platform labour. Platform extractivism thus reveals AI as a labour-intensive and territorially embedded political-economic system under capitalism that perpetuates legacies of coloniality.

The text implies AI perpetuates colonial hierarchies and exploits labor.

This is a theoretical/qualitative academic chapter arguing AI systems rest on precarious, poorly compensated labour and reproduce colonial hierarchies through annotation norms. The claims are structural and interpretive rather than quantified, but consistent with documented patterns in data labour research, so the negative implication is credible though not extreme.

The article describes AI's dependence on exploitative labor practices, particularly in developing regions, and its role in perpetuating colonial hierarchies. It details how AI systems normalize culturally specific categories, reinforcing existing power imbalances. This directly impacts human flourishing negatively by entrenching precarity and inequality.

The text describes a system where AI benefits from exploitative labor practices. It highlights the concentration of value in core regions and the reproduction of colonial hierarchies. These are significant concerns for human flourishing.

SOURCE     arXiv cs.CY (Computers and Society) (tier 1)
   ↓
DOCUMENT   18b8fe28-0efd-42ac-805d-62ff530bd8e6
           https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.37614
   ↓
EVIDENCE   3 extracted excerpts
   ↓
MODEL RUN  4 runs, methodology 1.0.1
   ↓
SCORE      -62  (Adverse)
   ↓
CONFIDENCE 80%