Richard Mathenge
Role:
Co-Founder & Chief Operations Officer, Techworker Community Africa; Founding Organizer, African Content Moderators Union; Advocate for AI Workers’ Rights.
Net Worth:
As of April 2025, Richard Mathenge’s net worth is estimated at $200,000.
Profile Overview:
Richard Mathenge is a Kenyan technology worker, labor organizer, and leading advocate for the rights of AI content moderators in Africa. He became internationally recognized for his pivotal role in training OpenAI’s ChatGPT and for championing the ethical treatment of tech workers who perform the critical but often overlooked labor behind artificial intelligence. Mathenge co-founded the African Content Moderators Union, the first union of its kind on the continent, and has been instrumental in bringing global attention to the working conditions and mental health challenges faced by outsourced AI workers.
Bio:
Born in Kenya in 1986, Richard Mathenge earned a degree from Africa Nazarene University in Nairobi in 2018. He quickly entered the city’s technology sector, joining Sama, an outsourcing firm that provides data annotation services to major tech companies like OpenAI. Initially, Mathenge worked on labeling LiDAR images for self-driving cars. He was later transferred to a project for OpenAI, where he and his team spent months reading and classifying disturbing and explicit content-including hate speech, racism, violence, and descriptions of sexual abuse-to help train ChatGPT to avoid generating harmful outputs.
This work, known as “Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback” (RLHF), was crucial for making AI models safer and more reliable, but it came at a significant personal cost. Mathenge and his colleagues were paid as little as $1 per hour and endured serious psychological trauma from repeated exposure to graphic and distressing content. Despite these hardships, Mathenge expressed pride in the positive impact of their work, which has made AI chatbots like ChatGPT safer for millions of users.
In May 2023, Mathenge and over 150 African AI workers voted to establish the African Content Moderators Union, a cross-company effort to advocate for better working conditions and fair pay for outsourced tech workers in Kenya. In July 2023, he and three former colleagues petitioned the Kenyan Parliament to investigate Big Tech’s outsourcing practices and legislate protections for content moderators.
Richard Mathenge’s Role in Artificial Intelligence:
Richard Mathenge’s most significant contribution to AI is his frontline work as a content moderator, training large language models like ChatGPT to avoid producing toxic and harmful content. His advocacy has drawn global attention to the “hidden labor” behind AI and the ethical responsibility of tech companies to ensure fair treatment and mental health support for workers performing this crucial task.
Through his leadership in the African Content Moderators Union and as COO of Techworker Community Africa, Mathenge continues to push for industry-wide reforms, including better pay, psychological support, and regulatory oversight of AI labor practices.
Nationality:
Kenyan
Educational Qualification:
- Bachelor’s Degree: Africa Nazarene University, Nairobi (2018).
Sources of Wealth:
- Techworker Community Africa: Co-founder & COO; advocates for tech workers’ rights.
- AI Content Moderation: Former content moderator for Sama, working on OpenAI and other major tech projects.
- Union Leadership: Founding organizer of the African Content Moderators Union, leading campaigns for improved labor standards.
- Speaking Engagements & Recognition: Named to TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI (2023).
- Advocacy & Public Policy: Petitioner to Kenyan Parliament for regulation of tech outsourcing.
Random Fact:
Despite the trauma endured during his content moderation work, Richard Mathenge and his team take pride in having made AI systems like ChatGPT safer for users worldwide.
Richard Mathenge’s career exemplifies resilience and advocacy for ethical technology. His leadership has not only improved AI safety but also sparked a global conversation about the rights and well-being of the human workers powering artificial intelligence.
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