Meanings
plural clickworkers
- engineeringA person who performs clickwork (repetitive and unskilled digital labour).
Many clickworkers operate in a gig economy, using platforms such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk, a name inspired by the 18th-century chess-playing automaton dubbed "the Turk", to pick up brief, specific tasks for fixed pay.
2023 September 14, Emma Yeomans, “'Clickwork' runs like clockwork as prisoners train AI systems”, in The Times, London: News UK, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 14 Sep 20231 more example
Around the world, millions of so-called "clickworkers" train artificial intelligence models, teaching machines the difference between pedestrians and palm trees, or what combination of words describe violence or sexual abuse. Usually these workers are stationed in the global south, where wages are cheap. OpenAI, for example, uses an outsourcing firm that employs clickworkers in Kenya, Uganda, and India.
2023 September 11, Morgan Meaker, “These Prisoners Are Training AI”, in Wired, San Francisco, Calif.: Condé Nast Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 06 Feb 2024
Origin
Compound of click + worker. Equivalent to clickwork + -er.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
clickworker. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/clickworker
“clickworker.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/clickworker. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “clickworker,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/clickworker.
Source: clickworker on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.