Humans in the Loop
Project: Humans in the Loop
Countries: global
Humans in the Loop (HitL) was founded in Bulgaria in 2017 to provide conflict-affected people with training and employment opportunities. HitL teaches digital skills, languages, and trains people on specific annotation techniques and tools. These courses give beneficiaries the skills that they need to work on clients’ data collection and labelling projects.
Image and data annotation is a growing market, expected to reach $5 billion worldwide by 2026. The annotation work that HitL do is necessary for machine learning and Artificial Intelligence across a wide range of sectors such as self driving cars, drones, satellites, medical imagery, and agritech. The results are used by clients to develop some of the most innovative solutions in the field of artificial intelligence.
HitL offers flexible hours and work that can be done from home so it's very appropriate for those with childcare responsibilities and is resilient to situations like the COVID-19 lockdown during which our workers had uninterrupted access to work.
By using a unique model coupling training with employment, HitL makes it easier for people to dedicate time to acquiring new skills, which is one of the main challenges for adults who are also financially responsible for their families and can't afford to reject paid work in order to attend classes. HitL annotators receive language lessons and technical IT training that are extremely practical and related to the work that they do, while at the same time having the security of earning a wage through easy and accessible work.
In the three years since its start, HitL has provided employment opportunities to more than 300 refugees in Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria and Iraq. One of the key goals is to promote gender equality amongst our workforce. To date, between 50% and 60% of our beneficiaries in every country are women. This is especially impressive considering that worldwide, women make up only 16% of the global ICT workforce!
The training and employment opportunities that are provided give our beneficiaries new and improved skills, confidence, and work experience, as well as much-needed finance to support themselves and their families in the short term. With the additional skills, confidence and experience that HitL provide, workers are enabled to apply for and secure a range of other decent work opportunities which will allow them to support themselves and their families and to be self-sufficient in the long term.
