His first assignment was a two-page essay on the health benefits of the Garcinia cambogia. It was a fruit he had never heard of, and an essay written for a student he didn’t know anything about. He earned $7 for three hours of work.“That was a lifeline for me, I needed the money,” Mr. Bundi, now 34, said in an interview in Nairobi. He added: “I could not sleep that night. I was ready to burn the midnight oil.”Mr. Bundi estimates he wrote more than 2,500 essays over the next 12 years, sometimes three a day. He balanced completing his public health degree with helping faraway students studying engineering, medicine and computer science to finish theirs. Some students gave him their school login information so he could keep up with their assignments.

Mr. Bundi didn’t know it then, but he was in the boom era of internet gig work. Newly wired to the global internet and hungry for jobs, well-educated youths from places like Kenya, the Philippines and India found opportunities in the crevices of the digital economy. They could make money online doing unglamorous tasks that others further up the economic ladder did not want to do.Then A.I arrived, and the good times ended.

Source: Kenyans Made a Living Writing College Essays. Then A.I. Arrived. – The New York Times