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Like many domestic workers, Leydy is no stranger to wage theft. In a previous job, Leydy had been hired as a cleaner and then asked to take on more and more responsibilities, from cooking to childcare\u2014with no additional pay. When she approached her employer and said she either needed a raise or additional help, she was fired, and she never got paid for her work that week.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cIn my rage, I went to the police,\u201d she told Fast Company <\/em>through a translator. (Leydy requested to only use her first name to avoid potential retaliation.) \u201cThey told me I had to get a lawyer and go to court in Newark. If I wasn\u2019t getting paid, how could I pay for a lawyer?\u201d<\/p>\n A new AI chatbot built by and for domestic workers could help people like Leydy find some recourse when they are confronted with abusive employers. The National Domestic Workers Alliance\u2014a nonprofit that advocates to improve labor rights and working conditions for nannies, cleaners, and home care workers\u2014just launched a multilingual chatbot called Ask Aya, which aims to help educate domestic workers on their rights, negotiate pay with employers, and even draft employment contracts.\u00a0<\/p>\n Over the years, NDWA has experimented with different tech solutions to improve outreach and foster solidarity among domestic workers, who tend to work alone and are often siloed in their jobs. These workers are also overwhelmingly women of color\u2014a significant share of whom are also undocumented\u2014and they are excluded from federal labor protections, which leaves them vulnerable to being exploited in the workplace and at greater risk of retaliation if they push back. NDWA has invested in tools to help these workers create written contracts to formalize their employment and even secure benefits like paid time off; during the pandemic, NDWA\u2019s Coronavirus Care Fund provided tens of millions of dollars in cash assistance to domestic workers who suddenly found themselves out of a job.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When NDWA conceived of Ask Aya, the intent was to center workers in the development process, to ensure that the use of AI felt intentional and complementary to the critical work its organizers do on the ground. \u201cWe did not start with a goal to harness AI and immediately apply it to our problems,\u201d says Alistair Stephenson, the chief strategy and impact officer of NDWA. \u201cWe started with this problem of isolation. If it is true that domestic workers are in these high stakes spaces and private homes and don\u2019t have much community or support anywhere, should AI be a tool we explore to supercharge that connection and that sense of support?\u201d<\/p>\n But NDWA wanted to ensure there were guardrails around the use of AI, especially because the organization was designing Ask Aya for a population of workers who are already susceptible to mistreatment\u2014and more likely to feel the negative effects of heightened automation and surveillance in the era of AI. \u201cTrust is absolutely the currency of care and organizing, so we don\u2019t take this question lightly,\u201d Stephenson says.\u00a0<\/p>\n NDWA started with a policy charter that would guide the development process, and the organization brought domestic workers into the process from the very beginning, drawing on feedback from over a thousand workers to better understand what they would find most valuable. From there, NDWA partnered with workers to build a database of vetted information to feed into the platform.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n