Generative Ai, Africa, And The Gospel

Generative AI (GenAI) is becoming the most rapidly adopted technology in history.

Yet as the world marvels at conversing with machines, my continent, Africa, is in a familiar place: Her people are exploited to fuel a technological revolution. The region provides much of the invisible and poorly paid labor that underpins global AI development—the data labeling and annotation work essential to making GenAI safe and usable.

Scripture teaches us that “the righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern” (Prov. 29:7, NIV). The apostle Paul exhorts, “Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven” (Col. 4:1, NIV).

It therefore behooves Christians to look beyond the AI hype, to critically examine the hidden labor injustices within the AI supply chain, and to prayerfully seek to “act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with [our] God” (Mic. 6:8) amid the undignified labor that makes the development of this technology possible.

Generative AI

AI isn’t a single technology but an umbrella term for loosely related systems that “learn” from data, enabling machines to perform tasks that typically require humanlike intelligence—from powering self-driving cars to filtering phishing emails into spam folders.

Under that umbrella, GenAI refers to systems that can create novel content—such as text, images, videos, or code—by learning patterns from large training datasets in response to user prompts. A breakthrough came in 2017, when researchers from Google published the “Attention Is All You Need” paper, introducing the transformer architecture, which became foundational for large language models and scalable generative systems.

Following the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, GenAI became the public face of artificial intelligence. Many consider this the “iPhone moment” for AI because it brought the technology into the public consciousness and made it a household name.

Africans are exploited to fuel a technological revolution.

It’s easy to see why GenAI is a public favorite. It feels like magic to have an AI chatbot respond to you in natural human language, almost as if it were thinking, understanding, or even feeling. The warmth and familiarity people experience when conversing with GenAI is no accident but a result of deliberate design.

Behind the scenes, data workers, primarily from the Global South, are employed by third-party companies contracted by major AI firms to ensure, at a basic level, that the systems’ outputs are helpful, truthful, and harmless. These workers ensure that when users attempt to elicit violent, sexual, or grotesque content, the system either refrains from responding or generates an answer in a harmless and appropriate manner.

We now turn our attention to these data workers to examine whether an injustice is unfolding—the very kind the Bible warns against: “Do not exploit the poor because they are poor” (Prov. 22:22, NIV). Because many of us use these chatbots, we must ask why this matters and how Scripture calls us to respond.

Data Workers in AI

God has entrusted global AI companies with immense authority in shaping today’s digital world. Their efforts to prevent users from accessing harmful information, such as instructions for building a nuclear weapon, are commendable. The human heart is desperately wicked (Jer. 17:9), and it’s an act of great common grace that these companies, at least the major ones, are striving to restrain that tendency by placing safeguards on the content produced by these powerful knowledge systems.

Nevertheless, we must look beneath the surface to examine whether the data workers employed to ensure AI’s safety are being oppressed to increase the wealth of the rich (Prov. 22:16). In his book Authority, Jonathan Leeman helpfully observes that good authority protects the vulnerable, strengthens communities, and promotes human flourishing.

This principle is echoed in David’s last words in 2 Samuel 23:3–4: “When one rules justly over men, ruling in the fear of God, he dawns on them like the morning light, like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning, like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth.” With this in mind, we must ask, Is the God-given authority global AI companies wield life-giving or life-draining?

Exploiting the Poor Because They’re Poor

Africa must generate at least 15 million new jobs every year to meet the demands of its widening youth bulge. This desperate need for employment creates fertile ground for exploitation. Silicon Valley has long outsourced its dirtiest work to poorer nations in the Global South, where weak institutions, recurring economic crises, and governments desperate for foreign investment—all legacies of colonialism—provide ideal conditions for such practices.

Against this backdrop, OpenAI began its first phase of outsourcing data annotation in November 2021. The company partners with Scale AI, which helps prepare data for training AI. As part of that, teams of Scale AI’s Remotasks workers in Nairobi were thrust into traumatic data annotation and labeling, paid an average of $1.46–$3.74 an hour to sift through hundreds of thousands of grotesque text descriptions.

Bound by strict nondisclosure agreements, most had no idea they were working for OpenAI. Karen Hao, a journalist who has extensively studied the struggles of African data workers, observes that the promise of jobs became less a pathway to empowerment than a hook, one that entangled Africans in demeaning, poorly paid, and psychologically damaging labor.

Psychologically Damaging Labor

Kenya’s population possesses relatively high levels of education, reliable internet access, and an eager willingness to work for modest pay. One hallmark of the rapidly expanding AI empire is its capacity to extract immense economic value from vast pools of human labor while offering minimal compensation in return.

As Hao reveals, this new form of digital exploitation unfolded through data sourced from Reddit threads, Common Crawl datasets, erotic fiction sites, Pastebin, Twitter (now X), and Library Genesis, among others. The datasets contained descriptions of child sexual abuse, bestiality, rape, incest, and murder—material drawn from some of the web’s darkest corners, and in certain cases even generated by OpenAI’s own language models to simulate the most extreme scenarios imaginable.

This process starkly violated the principles of Safety by Design and Wellness by Design that guide ethical software engineering. These frameworks emphasize protecting users and workers from foreseeable harm by embedding safety and well-being into every stage of development. Yet, instead of integrating psychological safeguards or limiting exposure to violent material, OpenAI’s contractors shifted the emotional and cognitive burden onto Kenyan workers with little mental health support or transparency.

Hao spoke to Mophat Okinyi, a former data worker, who described suffering long-term trauma from reading explicit, violent, and dehumanizing material. His story illustrates how “AI safety” in Silicon Valley was built on unsafe, inhumane labor practices abroad.

‘In the Best Interests of Humanity’

This model was less about ensuring public safety than maximizing profit and speed in a high-stakes technological race. OpenAI’s outsourcing strategy, designed to cut costs and sanitize its products for Western markets, enabled the company to maintain the appearance of ethical responsibility while concealing the exploitation underpinning its systems.

As a result, the economic and psychological costs were externalized to the Global South, while the financial rewards accumulated in the hands of Silicon Valley elites. This dynamic, echoing the logic of extractivism and digital colonialism, exposes how the pursuit of what AI companies describe as building AI “in the best interests of humanity” has, in practice, deepened global inequalities. Some portray AI as a quasi-religious project: a technology destined to deliver a kind of digital salvation or utopia for humankind.

This should be especially troubling for Christians, because we know that humanity’s ailments cannot be cured by technosolutionism. Ours is a moral problem that requires the spotless Lamb of God as its remedy.

Humanity’s ailments cannot be cured by technosolutionism. Ours is a moral problem that requires the spotless Lamb of God as its remedy.

AI companies have long justified outsourcing their most grueling data work to low-income countries by arguing they’re providing work opportunities and lifting people out of poverty. Yet this defense mirrors the colonial logic used by historical oppressors who claimed to be “civilizing” those they exploited. The justification that “at least they have work” echoes the rationalizations of enslavers and colonizers, who argued that forced labor and imperial rule were acts of benevolence.

Then, in March 2024, Scale AI notified its Kenyan workers of their removal from the Remotasks platform through an email that read, “We are reaching out with an important announcement regarding Remotasks operations in your location. We are discontinuing operations in your current location effective March 8, 2024.”

The email offered no warning or severance. To many, it was the ultimate proof that the company’s presence in Kenya had never been about empowerment—only about cheap, disposable labor. This wasn’t a partnership for progress but the latest manifestation of digital colonialism, where the Global South once again bore the burden of exploitation under the banner of technological advancement.

‘You Are the Man!’

A word to my fellow Africans: When the prophet Nathan confronted King David over his hidden sin, he told him a parable of injustice that stirred David’s anger. Then he declared, “You are the man!” (2 Sam. 12:7). Yet Nathan’s rebuke doesn’t stop at the palace. It echoes through redemption history to us.

We must have the humility to confess, “We are the man.” A common temptation in postcolonial discourse is to cast all blame on the West and burn with righteous indignation in our victimhood. Yet we must admit that we, too, are complicit. We sold our brothers and sisters for trinkets and coins during the slave trade. Even now, our leaders continue to do the bidding of outsiders, enriching themselves while perpetuating the very systems that keep our nations poor and divided.

Colonialism’s enduring legacies remain not only because of what was done to us but largely because of what we continue to do to ourselves. And at an individual level, I am the man who commits injustice against my fellow brother, warranting wrath from a holy God.

Better news the gospel brings! Horatius Bonar wrote in a hymn: “Upon a Life I have not lived, / Upon a death I did not die, . . . / I stake my whole eternity.” Even John Newton—the slave trader turned preacher who wrote “Amazing Grace”—confessed on his deathbed, “My memory is nearly gone. But I remember two things: that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Saviour.”

We are the men, but the Son of Man speaks a better word than the injustices and cruelty we do to each other. As B. B. Warfield writes, “A firm faith in the universal providence of God is the solution of all earthly troubles.”

So cheer up, fellow African. Our sins may be as red as crimson—our complicity deep and our failures many—but if we turn to Christ, even now, he’ll make us as white as snow.

God Is Still Good

A final word to Christians in tech: The good news of the gospel isn’t that we’ll finally be treated fairly in our work. The good news is that God came in the flesh and died for our sins, and in doing so created a new humanity—one marked by the fruit of the Holy Spirit in all their dealings, including their labor. We’re therefore called to especially high standards of work, “so that in everything [we] may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior” (Titus 2:10).

The Son of Man speaks a better word than the injustices and cruelty we do to each other.

Work existed before the fall; it has inherent dignity from the Creator. Work fell; we’ll inevitably experience hardship in it. Work was redeemed by Christ; we can now labor as unto the Lord and glorify God through our vocations. And work will exist in the new heavens and the new earth: “Do you not know that we are to judge angels?” (1 Cor. 6:3). Work will finally be made whole when the curse of this fallen and wicked world is lifted. Then we’ll work as we ought: with all the dignity and delight that work was originally meant to have, in the presence of our working God.

This rings true whether global AI companies change their ways or not. If they do, praise God. If they don’t, praise God.

Like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel 3, we know that God is able to save us from exploitative work tendencies in the current AI race, but even if he doesn’t, he continues to be our portion. He remains good. And he’ll one day make all things right.