Elsewheres of AI: Global supply chains, data work and the social counter-imaginaries of autonomous driving

Following Anna Tsing’s account of supply chain capitalism, this chapter argues for a more encompassing exploration of ‘the’ global supply chains of autonomous driving. I pursue this argument via discussions of two cultural productions that problematize the supply chains of autonomous driving and the highly labour-intense production processes of AV training data annotation: first, the co-research investigations and video documentaries of the Berlin-based Data Workers’ Inquiry (DWI) project on companies outsourcing work specializing in AI training data annotation to the Global South; and, second, Nicolas Gourault’s short film Their Eyes (2025), which provides detailed insights into the everyday workflows of AV data labellers in Kenya, the Philippines, and Venezuela.

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Image © transcript.
Image © transcript.