How AI wiped out an entire industry in Nairobi
ChatGPT's rise collapsed Kenya's contract essay-writing industry, which once employed 40,000 people in Nairobi, cutting $40–70-per-paper earnings after 2022.
The New York Times reports that generative AI, primarily ChatGPT, wiped out Kenya's ghostwriting business, which at its peak employed at least 40,000 people in Nairobi writing academic papers for US and UK students. Writers like Teresios Bundi, who produced over 2,500 papers in twelve years, saw prices and orders collapse after ChatGPT's 2022 launch. Related gig work such as transcription, data annotation, and Meta content moderation has also dried up, leaving 'humanizers' who rewrite AI text to evade plagiarism checks. Kenya's government had promoted online gig work since 2016, and roughly 80 percent of the country's jobs are informal.
- At least 40,000 people worked in Nairobi's essay-writing industry at its peak
- Charges of $40–70 per paper collapsed after ChatGPT launched in 2022
- Remaining workers are 'humanizers' reworking AI text past plagiarism checks
- Oxford researcher expects similar AI-driven labor upheavals worldwide
Full article237 words · extracted from the-decoder.com · click to collapse
In Kenya, ChatGPT wiped out an entire business model: writing academic papers for foreign students. Thousands of Kenyans wrote essays and term papers for students at universities in the US and UK, in fields like medicine, computer science, and engineering, sometimes using their clients' university logins, the New York Times reports.
At its peak early this decade, at least 40,000 people worked in the industry in Nairobi alone, according to researchers. Teresios Bundi, 34, wrote more than 2,500 papers over twelve years and later charged $40 to $70 per text. After ChatGPT launched in 2022, prices and orders collapsed. Other work in the country also dried up, like transcription, data annotation, and content moderation for Meta.
Kenya's government had deliberately promoted online gig work starting in 2016, and companies like Samasource helped label AI data. About 80 percent of jobs in the country are informal. What's left, according to the NYT, are "humanizers" who rework AI text to slip past plagiarism checks. Oxford professor Mark Graham expects similar upheavals worldwide. Bundi warns, "A.I. is coming for bankers, for accountants, it's coming for engineers, and A.I. will come for architects. It's coming for everybody."
AI News Without the Hype – Curated by Humans
Subscribe to THE DECODER for ad-free reading, a weekly AI newsletter, our exclusive "AI Radar" frontier report six times a year, full archive access, and access to our comment section.
Text extracted automatically; images, tables and formatting may be missing. Original: https://the-decoder.com/how-ai-wiped-out-an-entire-industry-in-nairobi/