[HN Gopher] Underage workers are training AI
___________________________________________________________________
Underage workers are training AI
Author : ayabee
Score : 90 points
Date : 2023-11-19 18:22 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| pjscott wrote:
| This is a weird article. It starts with an anecdote about someone
| extremely poor who _really_ needs some money, and how that person
| found a job with flexible hours and comfortable working
| conditions which paid relatively well. And then the article acts
| like this is obviously a horrible scandal that must be stopped.
|
| Even if the allegations of "traumatizing content" are true and
| not exaggerated cherry-picking, shouldn't the decisions here be
| made by the people actually involved? When well-meaning, well-fed
| people take away their choices (and income), this isn't exactly
| doing them a favor.
| jstarfish wrote:
| That's the moral dilemma. In a just world, people wouldn't have
| to sell their bodies or break their minds in order to eat.
|
| But we don't live in a just world, so until we do, denying them
| opportunities over "ethics" is condemning them to worse
| treatment elsewhere-- or starvation.
|
| Hungry people don't care about the opinions of fat academics
| pontificating about Ethics.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| great emotional appeal - yet there is more than enough food
| in a lot of the world, for the last fifty years, and much
| longer. Starving people are somehow close by warring people,
| want to bet?
|
| It is problems of Empire, how to transmit $2USD to the edges
| while pulling the real control to the center. young workers
| in dire conditions are generally docile and replaceable,
| right?
| okdood64 wrote:
| Outrage porn. Nothing new.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Send your own kids to watch photos of dicks and decide if
| they are dicks or not.
| mattdeboard wrote:
| Your critique of the article is sensible to a point. But your
| analysis is incomplete. I'm gonna lay out a few predicates
| hopefully we can all agree on as true, then get to my point.
|
| First, hopefully you can agree that, fundamentally, the company
| paying these child workers is trading money for labor. (This
| shouldn't be controversial, it's a fact of labor markets.)
|
| Second, the companies paying these children are extracting
| value from their labor greater than what they are paying the
| child laborers.
|
| Third, the employers chose laborers located "predominantly ...
| in East Africa, Venezuela, Pakistan, India, and the
| Philippines" for this work because that's where they can pay
| the least in labor costs while still extracting value.
|
| Fourth, keeping labor costs as low as possible while extracting
| maximum value is the most rational course of action.
|
| Fifth, and finally, it is very rational for children to seek
| out & undertake this work -- to exchange their labor for money
| -- given the economics of their lives.
|
| With these predicates laid out, my point: The reason your
| analysis doesn't lead you to thinking this is a raw deal for
| the children involved is because in a sense, it's not. Given
| the economics of their lives, this is, relatively speaking, a
| good deal.
|
| The rawness of the deal only becomes apparent when we start to
| inspect why material conditions are such that this deal --
| trading an hour of labor for $2 to a company serving a multi-
| billion-dollar market -- is enticing to _children_.
|
| In other words, this article, in _my_ analysis, is an
| opportunity to study and question the system that creates the
| conditions such that there is a labor market comprising
| children who are available for exploitation for cheap labor by
| very rich Western companies.
| pjscott wrote:
| I'll agree with all of 1-5, and elaborate on #2:
|
| > Second, the companies paying these children are extracting
| value from their labor greater than what they are paying the
| child laborers.
|
| This is _always_ the case with employment, assuming that the
| employer isn 't getting ripped off: when two parties make a
| voluntary trade, they're both getting something they value
| more than what they're trading away.
|
| --
|
| > In other words, this article, in _my_ analysis, is an
| opportunity to study and question the system that creates the
| conditions such that there is a labor market comprising
| children who are available for exploitation for cheap labor
| by very rich Western companies.
|
| I don't see anything that needs explaining here. _Poverty is
| the default._ For almost all of human history we were dirt
| poor. For almost all of agricultural history we were in a
| hungry, unpleasant Malthusian equilibrium.
|
| The real miracle is that things are getting better. And a big
| part of _why_ things are getting better is because it 's
| possible for richer countries to 'exploit' cheap labor in
| poorer countries - and help them escape poverty by doing it.
| It's amusing how companies keep looking for cheap labor in
| different countries every few years, because the places that
| used to have the cheapest labor got wealthier because of
| those opportunities. I realize that not everybody shares my
| aesthetics, but personally I see this as beautiful, even if
| the ground-level details are a bit grungy.
| foota wrote:
| I think the point that it's voluntary means it's a good
| trade for both sides isn't entirely accurate, at least in
| the long run. I'd argue it could be that someone is forced
| into working due to their conditions (e.g., if I don't work
| I won't have enough food) but in a way they're trading
| something that had both more long term value and you could
| argue it comes with negative externalities.
|
| In this case, if a child is working they're not learning or
| playing with others, and they're potentially being
| traumatized if the articles claims are to be believed. This
| has a long term effect on their well being, and produces a
| sort of negative externality.
|
| Is it the case that we shouldn't allow this? I'm not sure,
| since in the long run maybe I'd rather be nourished than
| innocent, but its probably reasonable to argue that there
| could be more oversight in terms of what content they're
| reviewing or how much they're paid to make it a better deal
| for them.
| surge wrote:
| "Child" is used loosely by commenters on this article,
| its fairly obvious they mean teenager when they say
| "underage". It was stated the hours were flexible and
| they're going to college so its assumed this is after
| school.
|
| Given its perfectly fine for teenagers (not children) to
| take part time work here and many of us here had to earn
| extra money before becoming adults or to help save up for
| education. I don't see the problem. My part time job
| bought me my own computer, that I used to start the
| career I'm in now. If you want me to believe they're more
| exploited than I was at my part time job at McDonald's of
| which was also of great benefit to me, you're nuts.
|
| This article tries to make this is somehow exploitative.
| This would be a great part time job here, it just pays
| the rate there, and its normal to pay kids less than
| adults anyway since its assumed their living costs are
| mostly covered by parents (a living wage is unnecessary)
| and their inexperience and unreliability makes its so if
| you're going to pay full rate you're better off with an
| adult.
|
| If the kids were doing to to make money for the latest
| Playstation, this would be fine here. I'm not seeing an
| issue going off what's in the article, if anything it
| seems like a huge boon considering what other jobs are
| likely available to teenage workers.
|
| >"It's digital slavery," says Hassan.
|
| It's only slavery if you're not allowed to leave, if its
| a bad deal, the wages aren't worth your time and effort,
| then don't do it. Go work in a blacksmith shop or
| something else they do in Pakistan that's somehow
| accepted but far more hazardous.
|
| The whole article is framed in a completely champagne
| social justice lense and not what's practical or what
| works or is to a mutual benefit for both parties. If
| demand for those jobs has gone up and this depresses
| wages, that's how it works here.
| mattdeboard wrote:
| The reason I constructed my initial response to you in the
| way I did was to try to make it clear I was acknowledging
| how complicated this topic is. It's not as easy as "pay
| them a Western wage" or "unionize the global south" or
| whatever. It's too complicated for easy answers. It's not
| all bad. It's not all good, either, though.
|
| I spent the time to make my comment because your original
| comment that it's too easy for well-fed westerners to poo-
| poo the situation was well-made, and correct in certain
| context.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| How do employees/workers get more than what they are
| trading away?
| pjscott wrote:
| They trade away time and effort in exchange for money.
| Presumably they value the money more than the time and
| effort, because if they didn't, they wouldn't make that
| trade.
| rexpop wrote:
| > Poverty is the default. For almost all of human history
| we were dirt poor.
|
| I don't know where you get this absurd idea. For many
| millennia we were _commoning_ , herding, living in
| symbiosis with game- and fruit-bearing wildernesses, etc.
| It's not since the enclosure of the commons that
| subsistence outside employment has been made, largely,
| illegal.
|
| For almost all of human history we have been wealthy and
| free. What we now recognize as "poverty" is induced by the
| holders of Capital in order to maintain a pool of
| vulnerable workers obliged to cater. We use military might
| and policing to undermine economic and political power in
| the colonies, ensuring we they remain desperate enough to
| take a bad deal. This isn't free market economics, this is
| blackmail, extortion, racketeering.
|
| If you want to zoom in on a single example and say, "ah,
| well, this youngster found a pretty flower and smelled it,
| how can you begrudge him a sniff?" while ignoring the
| churning, smoke-filled skies above, I suppose it will help
| you sleep at night, but I'm not fooled.
|
| Poverty is a mugging.
| MrNeon wrote:
| >For many millennia we were commoning, herding, living in
| symbiosis with game- and fruit-bearing wildernesses, etc.
| It's not since the enclosure of the commons that
| subsistence outside employment has been made, largely,
| illegal.
|
| And I wouldn't in a thousand years want to have a quality
| of life as low as we had back then.
| LewisVerstappen wrote:
| > who are available for exploitation
|
| You just randomly threw in the word exploitation again.
|
| They're _aren 't_ being exploited. Wages are different across
| the world because of cost of living & PPP.
|
| As the article stated, a _child_ can earn 4 times the
| national minimum wage. That 's not exploitation. They're
| _much_ better off.
|
| Expecting every American company to pay American wages for
| workers in Pakistan _would hurt people in Pakistan_ as it
| completely eliminates the incentive for companies to send
| jobs there.
|
| > is an opportunity to study and question the system that
| creates the conditions such that there is a labor market
| comprising children who are available for exploitation for
| cheap labor by very rich Western companies
|
| The reason why is because Western countries embraced market-
| based economies whereas India, China, South America, etc.
| spent decades embracing socialism/communism and threw away
| decades of potential growth/prosperity.
|
| A very interesting experiment is to look at North Korea and
| South Korea. In the 1950s, both countries were identical. One
| went the market-based route and allied with the West. The
| other went the communist-route and allied with China.
|
| You can also look at the "Asian Tiger Economies". Singapore,
| South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong. They all embraced market-
| based economies and and their economies exploded with
| prosperity.
|
| There's tons of research into why some countries prosper and
| some don't.
| mattdeboard wrote:
| "Exploitation" has (at least) two meanings: 1. treating
| someone unfairly for one's own benefit 2. make use of &
| benefit from some resource
|
| Are you sure this labor pool isn't being exploited?
| LewisVerstappen wrote:
| > "Exploitation" has (at least) two meanings: 1. treating
| someone unfairly for one's own benefit 2. make use of &
| benefit from some resource
|
| When you're referring to two people, then exploited
| always refers to definition 1.
|
| Have you ever heard anyone say "I exploited my employee"
| in a context where they're referring to definition 2?
|
| If you're talking about mineral deposits or something,
| then sure... you can apply definition 2. "The company
| exploited the ore's rich iron deposits".
| mattdeboard wrote:
| Labor is a resource. That's why the phrase "human
| resources" exists.
|
| Your contention that "exploitation" can't refer to labor
| is a political construction, not a rational one.
| LewisVerstappen wrote:
| Well, my suggestion is to avoid using terms with multiple
| meanings in a position where it can easily be construed
| in a different way then you intend.
| pjscott wrote:
| Employers are, indeed, making use of and benefiting from
| their employees. And vice versa. But so what? If they
| didn't benefit, they wouldn't bother.
| mattdeboard wrote:
| > so what
|
| Indeed, so what?
| lucaspm98 wrote:
| The first definition is the inherently negative common
| usage when applied to person-to-person or entity-to-
| person relationships.
|
| Applying the second definition to the labor market would
| mean every worker is being exploited, because no profit-
| seeking corporation (or resource efficient government
| program) would keep a workforce that is a net loss to the
| organization.
| mattdeboard wrote:
| > Applying the second definition to the labor market
| would mean every worker is being exploited
|
| No, it means the labor side of the labor market is being
| exploited by capital. It means the capital side of the
| labor market is being exploited by labor. And yeah,
| that's an accurate and correct use of "exploit."
| imtringued wrote:
| >The reason why is because Western countries embraced
| market-based economies whereas India, China, South America,
| etc. spent decades embracing socialism/communism and threw
| away decades of potential growth/prosperity.
|
| India is one of the most neoliberal countries in the world.
| Meanwhile China is much further ahead. The growth that
| China has experienced in the past few years exceeds the
| total economic output of India. Enjoy writing more comments
| in bad faith
| pjscott wrote:
| India spent decades under a very restrictive economic
| regime. That changed a lot after the big liberalization
| of 1991, but the official economic policies are still
| moderately stifling. The comment you're responding to was
| not made in bad faith.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalisation_in_
| Ind...
| LewisVerstappen wrote:
| Are you joking? Do you have any idea what happened to
| India after the British left up til the early 1990s?
|
| Maybe read up a bit - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Econo
| mic_liberalisation_in_Ind...
| jkdgkjdfhg wrote:
| Western companies are the outlier, not the norm, the norm is
| poverty.
|
| No one is extracting nothing, the western company find more
| value in the labeling than what they are paying, to you that
| value is probably 0, for the 15 year old, he finds more value
| in the money than in the time it takes him to label the
| content, to you who probably writes from a 2.5k mac that time
| is wasted for such low amount of money.
|
| I wish more people from poorest countries could join the
| workforce of the western companies, no doubt.
|
| Look at China, massive growth from the bottom producing for
| the west.
|
| Is easy to think that what we have is the norm and that
| everyone should be pay like a swe in s.f, look back at
| history, humanity is advancing so fast.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality
|
| Child mortality went from 27% in 1950 to 4.3% in 2020.
|
| So please, stop with the narrative that the west is a shit
| system, you live better than any king who lived before the
| 1900.
| mattdeboard wrote:
| > No one is extracting nothing
|
| Well, this is just objectively not true.
|
| As for the rest of your comment, I guess we'll just have to
| agree to disagree.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| >The rawness of the deal only becomes apparent when we start
| to inspect why material conditions are such that this deal...
| is enticing to children.
|
| Should these children be denied this deal because their
| "material conditions" aren't currently ideal? How long should
| they have to be denied opportunities for their material
| conditions to be improved? Why does your interest in their
| material condition outweigh their interest in having a good
| income right now?
| mattdeboard wrote:
| > Why does your interest in their material condition
| outweigh their interest in having a good income right now?
|
| "Outweigh"? I don't understand what you're trying to say.
| mrighele wrote:
| > Second, the companies paying these children are extracting
| value from their labor greater than what they are paying the
| child laborers.
|
| From the article:
|
| > He found that an hour's labor would earn him around $1 to
| $2, he says, more than the national minimum wage, which was
| about $0.26 at the time.
|
| The kid was probably making more than many adult workers.
|
| Also from the article
|
| > Platforms require that workers be over 18, but Hassan
| simply entered a relative's details and used a corresponding
| payment method to bypass the checks--and he wasn't alone in
| doing so.
|
| The article makes it look like the platform was taking
| willingly taking advantage of underage labor, but it was the
| kid that was pretending to be an adult because, again, that
| was a job that was paying 2-3 times more than other regular
| job in that country.
| mattdeboard wrote:
| > The kid was probably making more than many adult workers.
|
| Indeed, and the "why" of that economic reality is worth
| thinking about.
| brightlancer wrote:
| > The rawness of the deal only becomes apparent when we start
| to inspect why material conditions are such that this deal --
| trading an hour of labor for $2 to a company serving a multi-
| billion-dollar market -- is enticing to children.
|
| No, it's enticing to EVERYONE. FTA:
|
| "A friend put him on to the site, which promised work
| anytime, from anywhere. He found that an hour's labor would
| earn him around $1 to $2, he says, more than the national
| minimum wage, which was about $0.26 at the time."
|
| Also,
|
| "At 17, most of Younis Hamdeen's friends were waiting tables.
| But the Pakistani teen opted to join UHRS via Appen instead,
| using the platform for three or four hours a day, alongside
| high school, earning up to $100 a month."
|
| And many adults are working there:
|
| "The sharing of a single account within family units is
| another way minors access the work, says Posada. He found
| that in some Venezuelan homes, when parents cook or run
| errands, children log on to complete tasks."
|
| I'm shocked, shocked that people want to earn good money from
| the comfort of their home!
|
| > In other words, this article, in my analysis, is an
| opportunity to study and question the system that creates the
| conditions such that there is a labor market comprising
| children who are available for exploitation for cheap labor
| by very rich Western companies.
|
| First, you tried to backtrack your use of "exploitation"
| here, which is clearly negative.
|
| Second, these companies are HELPING the folks in these poor
| countries, paying them above the minimum wage (sometimes
| above the prevailing wage) for work which is less taxing
| and/or dangerous than the alternative.
|
| Finally, these companies didn't create the system, but
| they've found WILLING workers (mostly adults) and are engaged
| in mutually beneficial exchange.
| Mirioron wrote:
| > _Third, the employers chose laborers located "predominantly
| ... in East Africa, Venezuela, Pakistan, India, and the
| Philippines" for this work because that's where they can pay
| the least in labor costs while still extracting value._
|
| But that's also where some of the poorest people live! You
| know, the people who would benefit the most from having jobs
| like this.
|
| > _The reason your analysis doesn't lead you to thinking this
| is a raw deal for the children involved is because in a
| sense, it's not. Given the economics of their lives, this is,
| relatively speaking, a good deal._
|
| It is! In the 90s senator Tom Harkin proposed the Child Labor
| Deterrence Act:
|
| > _According to Harkin 's website, "This bill would prohibit
| the importation of products that have been produced by child
| labor, and included civil and criminal penalties for
| violators."_
|
| This was a bill that never got anywhere, but simply _talking
| about it_ had this impact:
|
| > _In 1993 employers in Bangladesh ' ready-made garment (RMG)
| industry dismissed 50,000 children (c. 75 percent of child
| workers in the textile industry) out of fear of economic
| reprisals of the imminent passage of the Child Labor
| Deterrence Act._
|
| > _UNICEF sent a team of investigators into Bangladesh to
| learn what came of the children who were dismissed from their
| factory jobs. UNICEF 's 1997 State of the World's Children
| report confirmed that most of the children found themselves
| in much more deplorable situations, such as crushing stones,
| scavenging through trash dumps, and begging on the streets.
| Many of the girls eventually ended up in prostitution._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Labor_Deterrence_Act
|
| Things might be different nowadays, but people from poor
| countries don't have as many opportunities. Taking some away,
| might be taking all they have.
| ben_w wrote:
| I have every reason to assume the traumatising content examples
| are the point of the data classification exercise -- I mean,
| filtering such content is probably the single largest expense
| of large forums and social media sites, so of course loads of
| people would want to train an AI to do it for them.
|
| As for giving people agency over their working conditions... I
| don't know -- every so often there's an argument about
| prostitution, where people argue against it because it's
| dangerous, and then someone points out how all work carries
| some risk and someone says something about capitalism forcing
| men to effectively sell their lungs to coal mines which are
| much more dangerous than women selling their bodies, and
| everyone gets cross and a few months later there's a similar
| debate like nobody learned anything.
| brightlancer wrote:
| > and everyone gets cross and a few months later there's a
| similar debate like nobody learned anything.
|
| This sums up online discussions for 30+ years.
|
| While some folks never learn, there's also a steady stream of
| new folks who weren't part of the previous conversations and
| _will_ learn if given the opportunity. (This is the positive
| side of the Eternal September.)
| morelisp wrote:
| The children yearn for the mines.
| bxguff wrote:
| the traumatizing content is a very real part of it, in my
| experience 'red teaming' LLMs included both reviewing and
| _creating_ overtly violent, sexual, racist content, via prompt.
| if you refused the work you got fired. not surprising, but
| real.
| Throwfi44 wrote:
| > _15-year-old Hassan... region of Pakistan._
|
| That is not underage work in Pakistan! "Respected" jurnalists
| should bother to do minimal research! I wish I had similar gig,
| instead of working for 50 cents/hour at building site!
|
| > _Article 11.3 of the Constitution of Pakistan says " No child
| below the age of fourteen years shall be engaged in any factory
| or mine or any other hazardous employment._
|
| https://paycheck.pk/labour-laws/fair-treatment/minors-and-yo...
| rayiner wrote:
| It's not underage work in the US either.
| pvg wrote:
| They are using 'underage' as a synonym for 'minor'. The
| article is not about the legality of employment.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| They are using "underage" because it baits your clicks. The
| article isn't about a real problem, the problem it was
| trying to solve is how to keep their employees paid.
| rayiner wrote:
| "Underage" means the person is too young to do the work,
| whether in a legal or moral sense. A 15 year old doing
| computer work is neither.
| pvg wrote:
| "Underage" doesn't really mean just that, it's ambiguous
| and arguably misused in this context.
|
| _A 15 year old doing computer work is neither._
|
| That's just your own unrelated gloss on the article.
|
| Is this the greatest of title or word choice? Probably
| not. It's not particularly hard to figure out what it
| intends to say.
| brightlancer wrote:
| Per the article, the companies' rules are to only hire
| persons 18+, but folks under 18 can easily lie and get
| hired.
|
| They may not be underage to work in construction, but
| they are technically "underage" for the company
| requirements.
| kube-system wrote:
| That may depend on the state and the time of day.
| e12e wrote:
| Depends on the nature of the work, though?
|
| > Hassan recalls moderating content while under 18 on UHRS
| that, he says, continues to weigh on his mental health. He says
| the content was explicit: accounts of rape incidents, lifted
| from articles quoting court records; hate speech from social
| media posts; descriptions of murders from articles; sexualized
| images of minors; naked images of adult women; adult videos of
| women and girls from YouTube and TikTok.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| Can't help but feel like this is an opportunity more than it is
| exploitation based on the information given.
| ayabee wrote:
| I feel the same way. And some of these people work together as
| a family. I wish they could get paid better.
| mattdeboard wrote:
| It's both an opportunity and exploitation.
|
| The opportunity exists only because this labor pool is composed
| of laborers who are vulnerable to such exploitation.
|
| To me, this article isn't about whether it's good or bad for
| the laborers involved, but an invitation to look at the bigger
| economic picture, i.e. why their material conditions are such
| that there are opportunities for children to trade $2 for an
| hour of their labor.
| 38rudj wrote:
| I don't understand your word choice based on other remarks
| you've made in this thread. You seem to lean into the
| "exploitation has two meanings" angle to justify the word
| choice and how the article isn't about whether it's good or
| bad... But then much like the article you immediately return
| to obviously judgemental language like "vulnerable". In
| casual conversation do you talk about your coworkers in terms
| of vulnerability to exploitation when discussing their
| amenability to their job? It makes everything else you say
| come across as insincere.
| rexpop wrote:
| > It makes everything else you say come across as
| insincere.
|
| This person doesn't read as "insincere" to me at all. To
| me, they read as very deliberately and conscientiously
| conceding shared language and norms where possible, while
| also holding--and expressing!--a position on the edges of,
| if not beyond, this forum's Overton Window.
|
| I find myself doing the same thing, often. It's a necessary
| component of discussing--with strangers--broad, complex and
| controversial subjects. The alternative is to simply agree,
| or to simply disagree--and with no understanding of how
| one's own beliefs relate to another's!--neither of which
| help us grow as a society.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| I started working after school as soon as I was legally able,
| which was before the age of 15.
|
| Completely foregoing school to make more than average might
| be the wrong decision for someone who is 15 or it might
| completely change that family's life. Balance would be great.
| mbrumlow wrote:
| I grew up in the US. I have had a W2 sense I was 13. I could not
| think of anything better that I would have wanted to do when I
| was 13. I leaned so much and had a ton of fun.
|
| The notion that "work" is bad has got to go.
| morelisp wrote:
| Reviewed a lot of rape threats at 13, did you?
| ctoth wrote:
| The purpose of this article is to be linked in a long Gish Gallop
| of AI harms (you know the type) and this one is supposed to be
| under the link "underage workers" so as to give people who skim
| that future article a sense of outrage, and oh look it has a link
| so it must be true!
| kmeisthax wrote:
| If there's one Big Lie in the AI field, it's the idea that the
| models just "learn things" as if we invented magic that eats raw
| text and images and poops out intelligence. Not nearly enough
| attention is paid to the labeling and filtering infrastructure
| used to produce the datasets, a lot of which is human labor or
| derivatives thereof[0].
|
| The fact that this labor is being offloaded to third-world kids
| who know how to steal their parents ID to earn beer money^W^W0.69
| bobux is also a scandal, but it's the boring, frustratingly
| mundane kind that is common to all "gig economy" companies.
| Surely, not every kid is being permanently damaged by this
| exploitation, and there's certainly worse exploitation out there,
| but it's still exploitation. And these AI models aren't AI,
| they're products of lots of human labeling and filtering.
|
| [0] e.g. reward modeling
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I don't get your point that it's not AI. Just because the input
| to the model is curated doesn't make it either not intelligent
| or not artificial. Its properties are what they are regardless
| of the genesis. Assuming the behavior they display is
| intelligence, I assume also we agree it's artificial and not
| naturally emergent. Am I missing something?
| jrpt wrote:
| It's not a really a "big lie" when they are upfront about RLHF.
| The H stands for human.
| pardoned_turkey wrote:
| I frankly find the idea that we must shield adolescents from any
| form of work... just pretty bizarre.
|
| There are some dangerous jobs out there, and I can perhaps accept
| the argument that most 15 year olds don't have the agency to sign
| up for that - although as a matter of practicality, having grown
| up poor, I know a lot of people who ended up better off working
| the kinds of jobs that journalists and the regulators now frown
| upon.
|
| You can make abstract arguments about how in a post-scarcity
| utopia, no person should ever have to work. But we're not there
| now and you don't get there by preventing people from working
| _before_ that vision of a 3D-printed, AI-based future can be
| realized.
|
| For now, work is inevitable for most; so what's wrong about being
| paid a living wage for classifying content in front of your
| computer on your own schedule? As a teenager, I'd have loved
| that. And I was exposed to content far more vile than anything
| this gig could've thrown at me.
| brightlancer wrote:
| > You can make abstract arguments about how in a post-scarcity
| utopia, no person should ever have to work. But we're not there
| now and
|
| I would argue that either A) developed nations _are_ post-
| scarcity or B) it's impossible for a society to ever reach
| post-scarcity.
|
| If we strip away all the "necessities" we've added over the
| past 100, 50, 20 years, and instead focus on what we've long
| considered basic necessities (food, shelter, clothing), then
| developed nations are post-scarcity because everyone has access
| to those necessities -- even someone "homeless" in the US has
| access to shelter in a real building, though it's only the
| minimum.
|
| If we say that the "necessities" we've added are genuine
| necessities, then how can we ever reach post-scarcity if we're
| able to continually redefine what are necessities?
|
| In either case, we should focus less on scarcity of
| "necessities" and more on absolute poverty, which leads to:
|
| > you don't get there by preventing people from working before
| that vision of a 3D-printed, AI-based future can be realized.
|
| Abject poverty is the norm, and nations became "developed"
| through brutal labor, including child labor. We shouldn't be
| telling people to stay poor because we don't like their working
| conditions.
| farleykr wrote:
| I wasn't sure if I wanted to throw my two cents into this comment
| section, but here goes...
|
| I'm absolutely astounded that anyone is framing the concept of
| taking advantage of the vulnerable and exposing them to this kind
| of material for such meager pay as an opportunity for them.
|
| This is slave labor and exploitation, regardless of whether or
| not the person in question is or is not a child by legal
| classification and whether or not the pay is above average for
| someone in their situation.
|
| It makes me sick to my stomach that we are once again achieving
| "progress" at the expense of vulnerable people.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| This is slavery, regardless of whether or not this is slavery?
| Ok.
| farleykr wrote:
| What word would you use to capture the idea of paying poor
| people or people in refugee camps a dollar an hour to label
| explicit content for AI?
|
| "The nature of the work often feels like digital servitude--
| but it's a necessity for earning a livelihood."
| jdminhbg wrote:
| If I were trying to come up with a word for paying people,
| the first thing I would do is exclude all the words that
| explicitly mean _not_ paying people.
| strken wrote:
| Paying someone tiny amounts of money to do a boring job when
| they have other options available is not slavery. Slavery still
| exists today, mostly in the form of phony debt bondage or
| entrapment of workers who are in a country illegally but
| sometimes as direct enslavement with no pretenses, and it does
| not look like sitting in front of a computer or on a phone
| training AI.
| farleykr wrote:
| The main figure in the article literally said their work felt
| like digital servitude [slavery] and implied they didn't have
| other options.
| strken wrote:
| The main figure in the article is using hyperbole to show
| how exploitative he thinks the working conditions are.
| However, despite being exploited, he is not locked up in a
| dormitory and forced to work because his "employer" stole
| his passport, or anything like it.
|
| It's entirely possible that actual slaves are forced to do
| this work, but the conditions in the article aren't
| slavery.
| confd wrote:
| You are appealing to a sense of morality that has eroded away
| from the general populace.
|
| I interpreted your use of the phrase "slave labor" as a
| euphemism for something like exploitative work as opposed to
| forced/coercive labor. This distinction matters, as well as the
| cultural differences between what sort of content is jarring to
| encounter in the US versus the regions listed in the article.
|
| On the other hand however, these youngsters need to pursue
| other options. In the case of the gentleman who saved $70 for a
| date, even, adjust their priorities.
| farleykr wrote:
| I see what you're saying but even taking cultural differences
| into account I can't imagine people from the regions listed
| in the article aren't at least on some level unsettled by
| earning a dollar an hour to read accounts of rape and label
| porn for AI.
|
| "The nature of the work often feels like digital servitude--
| but it's a necessity for earning a livelihood."
| pjscott wrote:
| Putting aside your devaluation of the phrase "slave labor" by
| applying it to things that aren't slave labor, I'll just ask:
| what would _you_ have these people do?
|
| Should they take a 60% pay cut to do back-breaking labor at a
| construction site? Take a bigger pay cut to wash dishes at a
| restaurant? Or perhaps they could work long hours subsistence
| farming; that's a pretty common option in Pakistan, if the
| numbers I'm seeing are at all accurate. I know people who used
| to do this, and from what I hear it kind of sucks.
|
| Taking distasteful options away from poor people because they
| might _choose_ those options is one of my least-favorite forms
| of moral grandstanding, because it hurts people who already
| have it rough.
| farleykr wrote:
| Google search for "slave labor definition": labor that is
| coerced and inadequately rewarded, or the people who perform
| such labor.
|
| We can split hairs and debate semantics but that definition
| fits my use of the phrase.
|
| I am not judging anyone doing the work. I'm judging the
| companies providing the "distasteful" options.
| pjscott wrote:
| > I'm judging the companies providing the "distasteful"
| options.
|
| To restate my actual argument, since you haven't really
| responded to it: what work would you have very poor people
| do instead? There are other options, but are those options
| actually better? And how would you or I know?
|
| It seems a little insulting to presume that you know their
| lives and their employment options better than they do, and
| should choose in their stead. But that's exactly what
| people are doing when they put public pressure on these
| companies to withdraw unseemly-looking options.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think a lot of people, many in the West with
| comfortable jobs, find it uncomfortable to admit that a
| lot of their lifestyle and maybe even their salary,
| depends somewhere down the supply chain on coercion (or
| at the very least, huge worker-employer power imbalances
| that look a lot like coercion) to make it all happen. We
| don't need to be able to rattle off a viable alternative,
| in order to express that there's something wrong.
|
| I don't know if a job or product exists that, somewhere
| down the value chain totem pole, doesn't at some point
| rely on employers exploiting the threat of poverty to
| collect value from people.
| farleykr wrote:
| Two things can be true at the same time.
|
| In terms of employment, I would have anyone do the best
| they can to provide for their families. And it's also a
| damn shame that the best option the people in question
| have is to label explicit content for AI for a dollar or
| two an hour at best.
|
| I agree with you that providing an alternative should be
| part of the conversation and ultimate solution but
| providing an alternative is not a prerequisite to assert
| that something is unethical.
|
| You talk about options like they have them. The main
| figure in the article said that they felt like it was
| digital servitude but a necessity. He's not sitting down
| with a financial advisor to weigh his options and then
| deciding filtering smut for our AI overlords is a
| fiscally responsible decision.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Given how most of the users here are silicon valley types...
| I'm not surprised they are fine with it.
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