ADVANCE.AI has employed over 100 part-time employees as data annotators since 2020, who are mainly local university students or fresh graduates in Indonesia. From a global perspective, Indonesia has a broad prospect in exploring the data annotation service because the country has a large working-age population, and the average wages are lower than those in developed countries.
To examine the societal impact of data annotation service in Indonesia, recently, we asked 25 data annotators who have working with ADVANCE.AI for more than six months to take a questionnaire survey on their work experiences of being a data annotator. The following are our analysis of this survey.
The survey found that 44% of respondents considered data annotator as their main job, while the rest of respondents regard it as a side job.
70% of respondents used their data annotation income to cover their daily needs, 30% of respondents used the revenue for investment, savings, and education.
In addition, 12% of respondents told us that their monthly income 100% earned from annotating data; 20% of respondents said that data annotation income accounted for 70% of their total monthly wages – In sum, a total of 32% of respondents stated that more than 40% of their monthly earnings came from data annotation work.
Overall, the data annotation service industry can contribute to Indonesia's local economic development and provide jobs opportunities to people in need. At ADVANCE.AI, considering most of our data annotators are still studying in the college or part-time employees, we have implemented a system that enables all of our data annotators to have flexible working hours and does not restrict to any office locations. As long as data annotators have laptops or computers with an internet connection, they can log in to the system and carry out the data annotation work. Therefore, being a data annotator is also a suitable part-time job for students or people who have a stable occupation but also looking for an additional income source.
Apart from the economic impact, the data annotation service industry has also become a channel to spread AI knowledge to the public – Accompanied by an increase in new-gen technology demand; we believe the data annotation service industry will also serve as a channel to reserve talents for Indonesia's Industry 4.0 development.
According to our survey, 80% of respondents did not know about AI technology before taking over the job of data annotation from ADVANCE.AI. Moreover, most data annotators are 20 to 25 years old – it is the prime time for people to learn new technical knowledge.
Data annotation service can create an equitable work environment for data annotators and open job opportunities to people with disabilities. It may exert significant influence in terms of improving the living standard and helping better the mentality of disadvantaged and vulnerable groups.
In sum, ADVANCE.AI's survey on data annotators' working experiences in Indonesia reveals that the data annotation service industry has made a positive social and economic impact on Indonesia – it significantly increases residents' incomes; it provides job opportunities to people with disabilities and has potential in helping disadvantaged and vulnerable groups lives; it also becomes an "ambassador" for the spread of AI and new-gen technical knowledge.