Workers in rural India powering AI revolution

• AFP, BENGALURU, India

Tending crops by day and then logging on for a night shift of data labeling, 27-year-old Chandmani Kerketta is part of a rising rural Indian workforce helping power an artificial intelligence (AI) revolution.

From her home in India’s eastern Jharkhand state, Kerketta is part of an AI-driven labor shift that the government hopes would transform lives, including by bringing more women into the workforce.

The work is basic, but essential for machine learning — data labeling, annotation and quality checks.

It is the type of information key for driverless cars.

“This job helped me finish my studies, and help at home on our farm,” Kerketta said as she tended tomatoes and peas.

Kerketta, from one of India’s constitutionally recognized tribal communities, was the first in her family to attend college.

She initially worked as an office assistant at a data-processing firm in Jharkhand’s capital, Ranchi, where she watched employees working at computers, but after a computer course at her village school, Kerketta joined an estimated workforce of at least 200,000 annotators in India’s villages and small towns — a growing figure, and roughly half of the world’s data-labeling workforce, according to US-based Scry AI.

Rural-based workers can label hundreds of images, videos and documents during eight-hour shifts, either from home or from modest Internet-connected centers.

“After my night shift of data work, I sleep a little, and then help in farming,” said Kerketta, who now holds a history degree. “In Jharkhand, farming is everything.”

Anju Kumari, 25, another rural AI worker in Jharkhand using a national fiber-optic cable network laid by Indian Railways, said the job had provided her with a pathway to a wider world.

Kumari said that work can include painstaking “labeling videos frame-by-frame,” giving the example of teaching AI whether a person using an ATM is “likely a burglar, or someone genuinely drawing cash.”

India, which is to host an international AI summit next month, has ambitious plans.

It is now third in a global AI power ranking, overtaking South Korea and Japan, based on more than 40 indicators from patents to private funding calculated by Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered AI.

US tech giants including Google, Microsoft and Amazon have announced multibillion-dollar investments to build some of the world’s biggest data centers in India.

The country is no stranger to back-end work for global technology firms.

Cities such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai host major international players, but India’s AI push is also expanding into more remote regions.

In Tamil Nadu state, along a winding rural road, Indu Nadarajan travels to a small-town office where she labels images for autonomous vehicles, such as road markings, headlights and animals.

Nadarajan works for NextWealth, an AI-enabling services firm headquartered in Bengaluru, with offices across small towns, supporting clients from the US, Europe and Asia.

“Many go to Chennai and Bengaluru to learn about AI, but being here in our hometown and learning about AI makes me feel very proud,” said Nadarajan, who has a master’s degree in mathematics.

Every AI model relies on vast amounts of labeled data, regardless of its complexity. The more precise the labeling, the better the technology performs.

“When I can design a product for a US company 5,000 miles [8,047km] away, why can’t I do it from 200 miles away?” said NextWealth founder Sridhar Mitta, 80, a former chief technology officer at Indian technology giant Wipro. “Anybody can be anywhere and do the things, because the value goes through the Internet.”

His scattered employees earn anywhere between US$275 to US$550 a month.

While AI-driven automation might render some jobs obsolete, Mitta believes it would also generate opportunities.

“Micro-entrepreneurship will be the next phase for small towns,” Mitta said. “It may not be another billion-dollar company, but they will produce something which will be useful to the region.”

As AI reaches rural India, it is quietly reshaping lives — particularly for women from conservative backgrounds.

For Amala Dhanapal, a colleague of Nadarajan and the first graduate in her family — her father is a tailor and her mother a homemaker — working in AI has changed attitudes.

“It’s a big thing,” Dhanapal said, adding that it provided a gateway to learning and greater financial independence. “Most girls find it difficult to even pursue their education due to their family background.”

When Kerketta first began her data-annotation work, villagers mocked her.

“Now, when they see me going around on my scooter, they look at me with pride,” she said. “Just like I do myself.”