A visual experience about a geographically disconnected experience. The focus of this short film is workers in the global south who have to teach the Artificial Intelligence that drives cars how to navigate streets they have never seen, streets that are in the opposite hemisphere to where they are.
Nicolas Gourault takes up the theme of autonomous vehicles to give voice to the workers of the Global South who, in the isolation of their homes and countries, cut out, identify and catalogue each image: ‘person’, ‘object’, ‘animal’. Everything is entered into a database that aims to build the ‘eyes’ of these robotic vehicles that will circulate on the streets of the First World where these people can hardly walk. Despite being essential, these workers are paid significantly less than those in the North, reflecting a logic of global labour exploitation and inequality in the distribution of global wealth. The invisibility of this work and the lack of awareness of the value it generates make labour demands difficult and accentuate the perversion of the system.
However, hope is emerging: through widespread access to geolocation tools, these workers are beginning to organise themselves, challenging the attempts of large companies to reduce costs by exploiting the labour of the specific few. (Margarida Moz)
