AI: Exploitation at its finest

 Nolan Hatchell-McNeil
Prof. John Horgan - HST401
12 March 2026

Artificial Intellegence as a concept is quite fascinating, using silicon to generate solutions, ideas, and conversations. Firing up data center computing tasks at a rate no human could fathom, this technology at its apex. Unfortunately the apex of technological advancement is profitable for those who stand at the precipice of capitalism. For those unfortunate enough to have the resources needed to create those silicon chips are experiencing an unrelenting plight, bending to the whims of tech giants in silicon valley. The advent of Artificial Intelligence in its current state is not only a reminder of capitalism’s exploitative nature, but as an omen for the shape of exploitation to come.  

We can start at the metals needed to design the chips for AI data centers. Many of the needed precious metals to design chips come from the exploitation of Democratic Republic of Congo. The  Democratic Republic of Congo is home to many metals such as tin,tantalum,tungsten, dysprosium, and gadolinium to name a few of the precious metals extracted from the Congo. The Congo, quoted by Colin Kinniburgh from Beyond:”Conflict Minerals”, “... has been home to the deadliest conflict since the Second World War. Since 1996 a series of wars there are estimated to have killed upward of 5 million Congolese people, with over 90 percent of these deaths due not directly to violence but to war-exacerbated disease and starvation. ” Such a conflict of that scale has been due to the lack of political infrastructure and underdevelopment of the country. While the country is fighting amongst itself and Rwanda, countries like the United States, China, and Rwanda have benefitted from taking the resources within the country. Mining the materials to design our modern day electronics relies upon inhumane working conditions that “Children as young as six years old still make up an estimated 40 percent of the mining workforce.” stated by Colin Kinniburgh. Such conditions are allowed to remain in a captialist structure as there is a need for both an exploiter and the exploited. The blood of children lies on the hands of many of these tech giants, but their profound lack of humanity only allows them to see to the increase of their bottom line. These “Conflict Minerals” are the enablers of tech users worldwide and AI 

    Similarly many of the laborious activities needed to maintain the systems are exploitative as well. Stated by Molly Elise Bush in “Economy and Exploitation: The AI Industry’s Unjust Labor Practices” she states that “...employ subcontractors to hire and manage workers who will perform the countless small, repetitive tasks required. These subcontractors, looking for maximum profit, often hire workers from less developed countries where labor rights are less strictly enforced and wages are not stringently regulated. What does this mean? Cheap, exploitative labor” she goes further to say that "those living in poverty, refugee camps, and even prisons have been performing data tasks for subcontractors like Amazon Mechanical Turk and Clickworker. ” which highlights that instead of choosing the most humane option, corporations aiming to line their pockets throw money to contractors who exploit prisoners and the impoverished to line disregarding the ethical ramifications of their actions yet only to uphold the status quo for global north. These obvious displays of exploitation are the groundwork for creating hypercapitalist establishments that only benefit the one percent and making way for future expansion of creating new inhumane ways to exploit. Artificial intelligence lives up to its computational predecessor family business, that is exploiting the global south for its resources both living and non-living. To highlight how AI impacts the planet from the article “AI has an environmental problem. Here’s what the world can do about that.” it states that “...data centres use water during construction and, once operational, to cool electrical components. Globally, AI-related infrastructure may soon consume six times more water than Denmark, a country of 6 million…” such consumption of water could only exacerbate the division between exploiters and the exploited. At that rate of water consumption the creation of dystopian living conditions not only for the global south, but beyond them. 


Work Cited

    AI has an environmental problem. here’s what the world can do about that. (n.d.). https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/ai-has-environmental-problem-heres-what-world-can-do-about 

    Kinniburgh, C., Immerwahr, D., Deb, S., & Riederer, R. (2015, October 23). Beyond “conflict minerals”: The Congo’s resource curse lives on. Dissent Magazine. https://dissentmagazine.org/article/beyond-conflict-minerals-the-congos-resource-curse-lives-on/

    Bush, A. M. E. (2025, October 21). Economy and exploitation: The AI industry’s unjust labor practices. UAB Institute for Human Rights Blog. https://sites.uab.edu/humanrights/2025/10/23/economy-and-exploitation-the-ai-industrys-unjust-labor-practices/