Siri has a body. AI’s most familiar voice is not just a disembodied all-knowing benefactor of trivia, recipes, and everything else you can’t recall (or never knew) at any particular moment. According to Professor James Muldoon, author of Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labour Powering AI, “... AI has a material body and exists only through new chips, servers and cables being manufactured and added to the machine. And just like a physical body, AI's material structure needs constant nourishment through electricity to power its operations and water to cool its servers every time we ask ChatGPT a question or use an internet search engine. The machine lives and breathes through this digital infrastructure.”

The physical body that makes up AI is not just sucking up water and power. AI is also built on the backs of real people. Not just the air-conditioned Silicon Valley engineers you might be imagining.  AI relies on the work of hundreds of thousands of low-paid workers spread across the global south.

Host: Jesse Brown

Credits: Caleb Thompson (Audio Editor), Tristan Capacchione (Audio Editor and Technical Producer), Written and Presented by Bruce Thorson (Senior Producer), max collins (Director of Audio), Jesse Brown (Editor and Publisher)

Fact checking by max collins

Additional music by Tristan Capacchione and Audio Network

Further reading:

• What’s behind the AI boom? Exploited humans — The LA Times
• James Muldoon — Personal website
• Mark Graham — Oxford Internet Institute

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