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The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use humans to do bots' work

theguardian.com

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Re: The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use humans to do bots' work

#71

Post by open-source-ux »

User23 wrote: post #9

AI is nonsense. Dijkstra was right. I'm not saying that silicon/mechanical intelligence isn't possible. I'm unaware of any physical law that precludes it. But what we currently call "AI" is just the pathetic fallacy run wild. All that said, multidimensional data-driven linear recognizers are pretty impressive.

I can't help repeat this quote from a previous thread. It's from an interview of a lecturer at the London Business School who appeared on a BBC TV programme about technology:

"...Expert systems are really slightly dumb systems that exploit the speed and cheapness of computer chips...There are many expert systems in the literature which are nothing more than a series of fast if-then-else rules...you do that a couple of hundred thousand times it can look remarkably intelligent"

The interview above was broadcast in...1984. There have been advances since then of course, but at the same time this 30-year-old quote still has a certain ring of truth to it.

Here's the clip from the TV programme featuring the quote above: https://computer-literacy-project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio....

Re: The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use humans to do bots' work

#72

Post by tzahola »

nradov wrote: post #64
tzahola wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if a service offers to automatically tag my photos, I don’t expect random people looking at them. In fact, I don’t want anyone looking at my family photos other than those whom I explicitly gave permission to do so. Same applies to my voice recordings. Same applies to my receipts. Same applies to my health data.

Unless your data is encrypted using keys that only you control then you have to assume that random people are looking at it. That is inherent in the nature of SaaS.

Technically yes. But since GMail became widespread, there’s a tacit agreement that my data won’t be looked at by random humans.

Re: The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use humans to do bots' work

#73

Post by baybal2 »

hyperrail wrote: post #2

My favorite example of this sort of thing, mentioned in the Guardian story, is the kerfuffle late last year when Expensify's receipt-reading SmartScan feature was found out to be partly backed by human receipt readers: https://qz.com/1141695/startup-expensifys-smart-scanning-tec... (I don't file expenses often, but personally when I do so through Expensify, I find SmartScan so slow that I now assume all my "SmartScan…

Quote from the article

>How to start an AI startup

>1. Hire a bunch of minimum wage humans to pretend to be AI pretending to be human

>2. Wait for AI to be invented

Re: The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use humans to do bots' work

#74

Post by csomar »

User23 wrote: post #9

AI is nonsense. Dijkstra was right. I'm not saying that silicon/mechanical intelligence isn't possible. I'm unaware of any physical law that precludes it. But what we currently call "AI" is just the pathetic fallacy run wild. All that said, multidimensional data-driven linear recognizers are pretty impressive.

Unless you mean General AI. We don't have that yet.

AI is huge. Machine learning definitively is changing how people work and will work. It is not there yet but it'll get there. Some people just want to monetize on the hype.

Re: The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use humans to do bots' work

#75

Post by dalbasal »

I think this article may be overstating a little.

First, the prototyping/bootstrapping with humans is not a terrible idea. It takes a hurdle, and moves it down the line a bit. You still need to get over that hurdle. It's still a potential failure point, but it's not an irrational approach. There are a ton of businesses started on the basis of.

  1. make free service
  2. get 1bn customers
  3. ???
  4. profit
Twitter, Google, Facebook... They deferred that little "make money" hurdle until they were ready for IPOs. Obviously, this opens a door for stupid plans, where the AI task will not be achievable. But, the "monetisation step" has comparable problems too.

The deception is a problem though, building companies based on deception is a problem and will probably lead to a nasty crash.

Second, if the goal is a result rather than to use AI... Say you're trying to solve some specific transcription use case, like Spinvox or Expensify. First, the problem seems solvable or soon to be solvable. Second, it's helpful to have a stream transcription attempts coming to you with real life accuracy requirements. Third, it's not a bad way of approaching Human-AI hybrid systems. Start with 100% human labour and gradually hybridise. Maybe you never solve the hard problems that will get you to 100% AI, but you find ways of leveraging human labour to solve it efficiently.

If what they reach is a tech/process that allows a person to transcribe 10k words per hour... that's pretty good too.

Re: The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use humans to do bots' work

#76

Post by amelius »

raverbashing wrote: post #18
xamuel wrote: post #7

Absolutely unsurprising given the current state of hype. How to get rich: (A) Start a page that applies photoshop effects to user-uploaded pictures. (B) Secretly accomplish A using low-paid grunts. (C) Claim it's done with AI, obtain a billion dollars of VC money

You don't even need to do it secretly, just say it's the next step. See: Uber

Yes, and if you want to do it correctly you use your AI story to convince some VCs to make you a huge pile of money, which gives you the advantage over anyone else who gets a similar idea.

Re: The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use humans to do bots' work

#77

Post by newsbinator »

open-source-ux wrote: post #71
User23 wrote: post #9

AI is nonsense. Dijkstra was right. I'm not saying that silicon/mechanical intelligence isn't possible. I'm unaware of any physical law that precludes it. But what we currently call "AI" is just the pathetic fallacy run wild. All that said, multidimensional data-driven linear recognizers are pretty impressive.

I can't help repeat this quote from a previous thread. It's from an interview of a lecturer at the London Business School who appeared on a BBC TV programme about technology: "...Expert systems are really slightly dumb systems that exploit the speed and cheapness of computer chips...There are many expert systems in the literature which are nothing more than a series of fast if-then-else rules...you do that a couple o…

The surprising thing might be that humans and other "thinking" animals are nothing more than a series of fast if-then-else rules too.

Not sure if this one has been debunked yet, but I remember learning in my psych class about the guy who fell asleep, got out of bed, drove a car a bunch of miles, and at his destination murdered his in-laws, all while apparently asleep.

It was used as an example for conscious/unconscious behavior.

Re: The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use humans to do bots' work

#78

Post by erikb »

I can already see how AI assistants call AI assistants to book an AI driven service for their AI bosses, to find out 0.3 seconds later that their AI boss being an AI doesn't need that service, calling again to remove the booking. Nobody notices that this happens, because no human is involved in the actual conversation. But of course both of these conversations lead to events where data needs to be transfered from the calendars to finance, billing etc. These transfers are done by humans of course because AI would be too expensive for that.

I see people going to work 16 hours a day handling transferring these transactions related to haircuts for AI bosses that don't physically exist (and therefore don't need haircuts), from one database to the other. The AI boss doesn't see the need for 8h workdays, because he's not human. And the money for the work doesn't need to be enough to afford living, right? The AI government will pay a base income to anybody anyways.

Re: The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use humans to do bots' work

#79

Post by [deleted] »

baybal2 wrote: post #73
hyperrail wrote: post #2

My favorite example of this sort of thing, mentioned in the Guardian story, is the kerfuffle late last year when Expensify's receipt-reading SmartScan feature was found out to be partly backed by human receipt readers: https://qz.com/1141695/startup-expensifys-smart-scanning-tec... (I don't file expenses often, but personally when I do so through Expensify, I find SmartScan so slow that I now assume all my "SmartScan…

Quote from the article >How to start an AI startup >1. Hire a bunch of minimum wage humans to pretend to be AI pretending to be human >2. Wait for AI to be invented

[deleted]

Re: The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use humans to do bots' work

#80

Post by gaius »

dalbasal wrote: post #75

I think this article may be overstating a little. First, the prototyping/bootstrapping with humans is not a terrible idea. It takes a hurdle, and moves it down the line a bit. You still need to get over that hurdle. It's still a potential failure point, but it's not an irrational approach. There are a ton of businesses started on the basis of. 1. make free service 2. get 1bn customers 3. ??? 4. profit Twitter, Google…

First, the prototyping/bootstrapping with humans is not a terrible idea

Well, it might be. Are human drivers really prototyping/bootstrapping self-driving cars? We are deeply into the territory of Moravec’s Paradox here.

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