The Hidden Labor of Data Curation: Who Cleaned the Internet So Your Model Could Be Smart?

You type a prompt. The AI responds. It is polite. It is coherent. It is not toxic. You assume this is just how the model is. It is not. Behind the scenes, thousands of workers spent countless hours scrubbing the internet of its worst content. They removed child sexual abuse material. They removed beheadings. They removed hate speech. They saw things that will haunt them forever. They were paid pennies. They were given no therapy. They were the invisible janitors of the AI revolution. This is…