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How to create an AI startup – convince some humans to be your training set

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Re: How to create an AI startup – convince some humans to be your training set

#21

Post by exolymph »

AznHisoka wrote: post #2

"It will also be interesting if there is a legal claim for the gig workers at these companies to make that their labor helped “create the value” at the companies that replace them." Well, I would certainly hope any employee help create value for the companies they work for... even if they get laid off eventually.

The key word here is "legal". Without having a contract to that effect, no employee or contractor can just appropriate equity, regardless of how much sweat they put into building the company. I'm not sure why OP thinks there might be a legal claim.

Re: How to create an AI startup – convince some humans to be your training set

#22

Post by RobertoG »

morganK wrote: post #10

Would have like to hear at least one concrete exemple of startup actually doing that. Seems a bit theoretical at the moment, as big companies doesn't need to do that thanks to existing datasets, and I've never heard any startups using dozens (hundreds?) of contractors for this kind of job.

Not a start-up and not deep learning (until now I suppose), but this have been done for years in the translation industry.

They feed their automatic systems with the output of the human translator. Every input means less and less manual work that need to be done in the future.

Re: How to create an AI startup – convince some humans to be your training set

#24

Post by awinter-py »

nxzero wrote: post #3

Unclear how this is new, even Google, Amazon, etc. have either been doing this internally, offering it as a service, been susceptible to man-in-the-middle exploits to mining real world data for training sets, released data, etc.

Spot on. One recipe to become a tech acquisition target is to collection a 'new kind' of user data -- all big companies are hungry for this.

This phenomenon is not at all new; data has been informing investment models forever and access to that data comes from having the right customers, and is closely hoarded once gotten.

Some of the largest companies in the late middle ages were wool buyers -- they weren't permitted to trade internationally, but they used locally owned franchises and market knowledge to corner the market anyway. And many of the largest ag commodities futures traders in this century also own substantial farm acreage. Those capital one guys who were SEC'd for trading options on credit card receipts were leveraging customer activity.

Point being -- you've always needed data to train a good model.

Re: How to create an AI startup – convince some humans to be your training set

#25

Post by globba22 »

morganK wrote: post #10

Would have like to hear at least one concrete exemple of startup actually doing that. Seems a bit theoretical at the moment, as big companies doesn't need to do that thanks to existing datasets, and I've never heard any startups using dozens (hundreds?) of contractors for this kind of job.

the post office used humans for many years to train OCR models, e.g. zip code readers.

I visited a postal routing facility once in the 90s and saw a long row of metal stationed by about 20 people, 10 to each side. Envelopes passed through on a sort of pneumatic tube-like conveyor, paused in front of a human operator who read a single digit of a zip code, keyed it in and sent the envelope to be read by the next person.

Re: How to create an AI startup – convince some humans to be your training set

#26

Post by LunaSea »

tariqali34 wrote: post #14
morganK wrote: post #10

Would have like to hear at least one concrete exemple of startup actually doing that. Seems a bit theoretical at the moment, as big companies doesn't need to do that thanks to existing datasets, and I've never heard any startups using dozens (hundreds?) of contractors for this kind of job.

Netflix used humans to tag movies for their recommendation system. Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/01/how-ne...

Netflix is not a startup.

Re: How to create an AI startup – convince some humans to be your training set

#27

Post by true_religion »

LunaSea wrote: post #26
tariqali34 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix used humans to tag movies for their recommendation system. Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/01/how-ne...

Netflix is not a startup.

At one point, Netflix was a startup.

Re: How to create an AI startup – convince some humans to be your training set

#29

Post by lifeisstillgood »

This does hit at one of the most basic debates of the next decade - how much of my actions and behaviours do I own? Creating a link from one page to another, thus providing PageRank with value - do I get a cut of that value? Purchasing a book or a film, thus making profit for the reseller's recommendation engine? Driving around populating maps with my GPS co-ordinates. Just generally leaving digital footprints makes someone a training set somewhere - and yet instead of this being a public good it's private profit - the term bandied Around after 2008 was "socialising risk, privatising profits". The same debate should be happening here - but I only occasionally hear about something like it.

Or am I listening in wrong places?

Re: How to create an AI startup – convince some humans to be your training set

#30

Post by zodPod »

>It will also be interesting if there is a legal claim for the gig workers at these companies to make that their labor helped “create the value” at the companies that replace them.

I'd assume that you'd be waiving any legal claim they might have when they sign the ToS or w/e. I mean, in all fairness, they are getting paid to perform these actions and be recorded. What more would they have any claim for anyway? A percentage based on the times their anonymized playthroughs were used?

"Well, we've got 1,000 people and each played 100 games of Go. We took that 100,000 games and trained a single dataset to play against itself." User is 1 player of 1,000. Company makes 20,000,000 and sets aside 25% (magically) for paying back the original people. Those people now get $5000. That $5000 is cool but it's not life changing.

EDIT: It occurs to me that my numbers could be skewed. This could be significant if they only used 100 people or so, I guess. My point wasn't necessarily to shoot down the notion just to discuss it. What would the person have a claim to be it legal or otherwise?

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