--- title: Kenya bet its graduates on gig work in 2022. ChatGPT... description: Kenya's essay-writing outsourcing industry, which paid around 40,000 Nairobi workers to complete assignments for cheating students abroad, has collapsed since... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/kenya-bet-its-graduates-on-gig-work-in-2022-chatgpt-launched-that-year-qgzdj4wua twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Kenya bet its graduates on gig work in 2022. ChatGPT launched that year | daily.dev og:description: Kenya's essay-writing outsourcing industry, which paid around 40,000 Nairobi workers to complete assignments for cheating students abroad, has collapsed since... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/kenya-bet-its-graduates-on-gig-work-in-2022-chatgpt-launched-that-year-qgzdj4wua og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/qgZDJ4wUA.png og:image:alt: Kenya bet its graduates on gig work in 2022. ChatGPT launched that year og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Kenya bet its graduates on gig work in 2022. ChatGPT launched that year **[The Next Web](https://daily.dev/sources/tnw)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Kenya's essay-writing outsourcing industry, which paid around 40,000 Nairobi workers to complete assignments for cheating students abroad, has collapsed since ChatGPT's 2022 launch, according to New York Times reporting. The government had built a ten-year National Digital Masterplan around online outsourcing that same year, betting graduates' livelihoods on gig work AI would soon replace. Transcription work dried up starting 2017 as speech-to-text software improved. A Scale AI/Center for AI Safety index shows AI models went from completing 2.5% of freelance tasks last October to 16% by July, suggesting the disruption is accelerating. Amazon Mechanical Turk is closing after 21 years, Meta planned to cut teams by 60% for AI, and Uber exited Nigeria and Uganda amid workforce cuts. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How much of the online freelance work economy can AI models now complete, according to the Scale AI freelance task index? AI models completed about 16% of freelance tasks measured by the Scale AI and Center for AI Safety index by July, up sharply from 2.5% the previous October. The index tracks how much online freelance work, including product design and data analysis, leading models can actually finish, showing rapid acceleration in AI capability over gig-economy tasks. _Track how fast AI is eating freelance work by following capability benchmarks like this on daily.dev._ ### Why did Kenya's essay-writing gig industry collapse after ChatGPT launched? Kenya's essay-writing industry, which at its peak paid at least 40,000 people in Nairobi to write papers for cheating students overseas, has shrunk to almost nothing since ChatGPT's 2022 release because AI can now write essays cheaply and instantly, eliminating demand for human ghostwriters. Remaining work mostly involves editing AI-written papers to evade university plagiarism and AI-detection software. _Developers building AI writing tools can watch daily.dev for how detection and generation keep escalating._ ### Why did transcription jobs disappear from Kenya's gig economy before the essay-writing collapse? Transcription work in Kenya began drying up from 2017 because it was among the first job categories speech-to-text software could handle well enough to replace human transcribers. One worker, Frida Mwangi, saw her wages fall as employers switched to AI transcription tools, even though she found fixing AI errors on medical audio slower than transcribing from scratch herself. _Anyone weighing AI transcription tools against manual work can find similar case studies on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Amazon is closing Mechanical Turk, the human workforce it sold as AI](https://daily.dev/posts/amazon-is-closing-mechanical-turk-the-human-workforce-it-sold-as-ai-8lddznkkd) · The Next Web · 13 upvotes · 1 comments - [AI is cutting older workers' careers short, study finds](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-is-cutting-older-workers-careers-short-study-finds-sigvjnxq7) · The Next Web · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [OpenAI GPT-5.4 launches, AI gets its own jobs report, Anthropic surges after U.S. ban](https://daily.dev/posts/openai-gpt-5-4-launches-ai-gets-its-own-jobs-report-anthropic-surges-after-u-s-ban-gtnfmmsgo) · The New Stack · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#automation](https://daily.dev/tags/automation), [#genai](https://daily.dev/tags/genai), [#chatgpt](https://daily.dev/tags/chatgpt), [#future-of-work](https://daily.dev/tags/future-of-work) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/kenya-bet-its-graduates-on-gig-work-in-2022-chatgpt-launched-that-year-qgzdj4wua) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Kenya bet its graduates on gig work in 2022. 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ChatGPT launched that year"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/kenya-bet-its-graduates-on-gig-work-in-2022-chatgpt-launched-that-year-qgzdj4wua#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"How much of the online freelance work economy can AI models now complete, according to the Scale AI freelance task index?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"AI models completed about 16% of freelance tasks measured by the Scale AI and Center for AI Safety index by July, up sharply from 2.5% the previous October. The index tracks how much online freelance work, including product design and data analysis, leading models can actually finish, showing rapid acceleration in AI capability over gig-economy tasks. 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Developers building AI writing tools can watch daily.dev for how detection and generation keep escalating."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Why did transcription jobs disappear from Kenya's gig economy before the essay-writing collapse?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Transcription work in Kenya began drying up from 2017 because it was among the first job categories speech-to-text software could handle well enough to replace human transcribers. One worker, Frida Mwangi, saw her wages fall as employers switched to AI transcription tools, even though she found fixing AI errors on medical audio slower than transcribing from scratch herself. Anyone weighing AI transcription tools against manual work can find similar case studies on daily.dev."}}]} ```