Signal Digital Labor Platforms Framed as Infrastructure of AI-Era Extractivism

Summary

An arXiv chapter published September 29, 2026 analyzes how digital labor platforms function as infrastructures of extractivism within contemporary AI, letting corporations appropriate data and labor while concentrating value in core regions like Silicon Valley. It proposes 'platform extractivism' as a framework linking commodification, epistemic dominance, and reproduction through territory. Drawing on mixed-methods research with Venezuelan and Colombian data workers, it argues AI depends on precarious platform labor to produce, clean, annotate, and maintain data. It further argues annotation systems normalize US-centric categories as universal knowledge, reproducing colonial hierarchies. The chapter also shows how this labor is sustained by unpaid reproductive work, community networks, and material conditions. It concludes AI is a labor-intensive, territorially embedded political-economic system that perpetuates colonial legacies.