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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

#91

Post by specialist »

randomsearch wrote: post #66
edanm wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say you're not profitable, and raise money on the expectation that you can eventually lower costs and only then become profitable. If you then find out you can't lower costs (i.e. you can't automate something you could, and keep having to rely on more costly labor), then you eventually collapse.

Uber

Uber, Airbnb, others get their "partners" to provide the working capital.

This is a new take on the "value added reseller" business model. (I don't know what else to call it. Multi-level marketing?)

For instance, Autodesk's dealer channel covered the costs of marketing, sales, technical support, training, etc. While they kept the sweet nectar of profits for themselves.

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

#92

Post by PretzelFisch »

vultour wrote: post #86
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…

How do they handle bogus results from MTurk? I know people that tried to use it and had to stop because 95% of the "workers" just put meaningless data in hoping you don't notice and they get paid.

Couldn't you just solve that by sending the job to multiple workers and comparing the results?

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

#93

Post by deepGem »

Am glad this is highlighted now. Back in 2015, when we wanted to build an meeting scheduling bot, we naively thought we could use only machines to get the job done. 3 months later we realized that was no way feasible, not then not in the next 10 years. So the common feedback we got was to just use low cost labor in India/Phillipines to get the job done. To us, that was a no-go because we kept privacy as the top criterion for doing anything with people's inboxes. Even after obfuscation, we didn't want any human to read or parse soeone's private messages. So we dropped the idea and shut shop. Sure we failed, but at least we were true to our conscience.

Another way to have tackled this problem was to just go down the research route and build a product once the ML was fully baked, but VCs won't fund such adventures.

To get VC funding, we had to lie through our teeth, which was a total no-go. I am not bringing the righteous argument, but for once I feel really good that our viewpoints held then are corroborated now, some kind of confirmation bias kicking in.

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

#95

Post by wool_gather »

tzahola wrote: post #72
nradov wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is there? It's an inherent part of the service that Gmail software reads your mail (including until recently, for advertisement). How do you expect developers to work on that software without, at least occasionally, looking at the real inputs?

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

#96

Post by jexah »

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…

You must remember that "Expert System" is a term used in machine learning which specifically means a system in which the input is (logically, not literally) processed by humans at every step until the output is provided, rather than a term to describe "the best" AI systems.

As mentioned in the quote, this is usually done though if/else "if this is the case, then the next step is that".

The reason they are called Expert Systems is that they provably provide the correct output for any input 100% of the time.

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

#97

Post by shanghaiaway »

PretzelFisch wrote: post #92
vultour wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they handle bogus results from MTurk? I know people that tried to use it and had to stop because 95% of the "workers" just put meaningless data in hoping you don't notice and they get paid.

Couldn't you just solve that by sending the job to multiple workers and comparing the results?

Think about it.

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

#98

Post by jexah »

bencollier49 wrote: post #90
User23 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rendered in English: Automated statistics is a consequence of machine learning. Machine learning is a consequence of AI. I don't understand your point. Please explain.

They mean "greater than or equal to", which doesn't make it correct, but at least makes sense of their point.

Even then, "greater than or equal to" is >= not =>

I guess they're meant to be some kind of arrow?

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

#99

Post by dfee »

adamdrake wrote: post #87

I gave a lecture a couple of months ago called Developing your AI BS Detector addressing this very topic. https://adamdrake.com/developing-your-ai-bs-detector.html The main thesis is that there seem to be more and more companies out there solving interesting problems, which by itself is great, but they're bolting a lot of wording on top talking about AI. Most of this seems to be an attempt to differentiate themselves…

Well the idea is that all emerging ideas with broad appeal go through the Hype Cycle. I don’t know that AI is different or dangerous in that regard.

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

#100

Post by adamdrake »

dfee wrote: post #99
adamdrake wrote: post #87

I gave a lecture a couple of months ago called Developing your AI BS Detector addressing this very topic. https://adamdrake.com/developing-your-ai-bs-detector.html The main thesis is that there seem to be more and more companies out there solving interesting problems, which by itself is great, but they're bolting a lot of wording on top talking about AI. Most of this seems to be an attempt to differentiate themselves…

Well the idea is that all emerging ideas with broad appeal go through the Hype Cycle. I don’t know that AI is different or dangerous in that regard.

I'm not of the opinion that it is dangerous as an idea, but rather that the intentional deception I see on the AI topic is dangerous (not to mention unethical).

I can't think of a single example of an "AI" company I talked with who did not know that they were explicitly exaggerating their claims and capabilities for the express purpose of attracting funding and fueling the hype fire.

The solid tech startups I've seen are focused on the problem they are solving for customers rather than the tooling (AI).

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