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

theguardian.com

141–145 of 145 posts

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

#141
post #53

See also: the front page of HN. You didn’t think that was an algorithm choosing which stories you see, did you? :) It works well. And considering how much effect HN has on our daily lives, it’s neat that the algorithm reduces to “this human has good taste.” I see no reason why HN won’t be around for decades. And that’s exciting. It’s the only newspaper that feels like a community. This used to feel strange — if you t…

Youtube's algorithm is designed to give the viewer stuff similar to what they have already seen. Be it Goto Conference videos, Nazi rants, or wacky people doing fingernail designs. Youtube's AI is not designed take chances and offer up something 'surprising'. 'Surprising' might be offensive not enlightening.

"Similar" also might be offensive not enlightening.

YT has a problem with trolls and harassers posting reaction videos that YT gets tricked into thinking are "similar".

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

#142

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…

I consulted with a great company in this field and they also use a mix of OCR and humans. Difference is they have trained in-house staff, rather than farming it out to just anyone for the cheapest they can get.

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

#143

Great to see the Guardian referencing back to Spinvox here, whose speech-to-text service turned out to be largely run be sweatshop workers in the Phillipines; and a warning from history: This shtick works as long as you can transition to AI. If not, then the service will become increasingly flaky until the business collapses.

> a warning from history: This shtick works as long as you can transition to AI. If not, then the service will become increasingly flaky until the business collapses. The business model "use low-paid labor to service wealthy clients" seems a little more inherently stable than that. In most cases, nobody expects a collapse. Why in speech-to-text?

The key distinction for many such "AI-enabled" services is that they're providing a service that is not cost-efficient even for low-paid labor, so they are selling below cost unless the expected AI-based automation gains materialize and achieve a drastic reduction in the manual labor required.

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

#144
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.

Could you please provide a reference for said Dijkstra's sentiments on AI?

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

#145
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

ya its an arrow bud
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