Can a Big Tech company be sued in Kenya for alleged abuses at an outsourcing company working on its behalf? That's the question at the heart of two lawsuits that are attempting to set a new precedent in Kenya, which is the prime destination for tech companies looking to farm out digital work to the African continent. The two-year legal battle stems from allegations of human rights violations at an outsourced Meta content moderation facility in Nairobi, where employees hired by a contractor were paid as little as 1.50 per hour to view traumatic content, such as videos of rapes, murders, and war crimes. The suits claim that despite the workers being contracted by an outsourcing company, called Sama, Meta essentially supervised and set the terms for the work, and designed and managed the software required for the task. Both companies deny wrongdoing and Meta has challenged the Kenyan courts' jurisdiction to hear the cases.

The images pop up in Mophat Okinyi's mind when he's alone, or when he's about to sleep. Okinyi, a former content moderator for Open AI's ChatGPT in Nairobi, Kenya, is one of four people in that role who have filed a petition to the Kenyan government calling for an investigation into what they describe as exploitative conditions for contractors reviewing the content that powers artificial intelligence programs. "It has really damaged my mental health," said Okinyi. The 27-year-old said he would would view up to 700 text passages a day, many depicting graphic sexual violence. He recalls he started avoiding people after having read texts about rapists and found himself projecting paranoid narratives on to people around him.

Artificial intelligence is a rapidly evolving field of technology. Kenya as a third world country has not lagged behind in making a comprehensive step towards promoting and implementing AI technology although it will take time to fully embrace it. The Kenyan government has used this technology to improve health, agriculture and government services. As an AI engineer, I firmly believe that these emerging technologies have a significant impact on national security. As NIS mission is to gather intelligence, analyse and apply results to predict the various outcomes and actions that need to be taken, it follows new integration tools provided by the machine learning that will significantly reduce the time NIS analysts and operators may use to analyze Intelligence data. it draws conclusions in it, and advises the Government accordingly on appropriate intelligence reports.