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Google hired microworkers to train its controversial Project Maven AI

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Re: Google hired microworkers to train its controversial Project Maven AI

#31

Post by kartan »

tomcooks wrote: post #25
bearmcbearsly wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you work a solid hour and only earn $1 gross income, that seems extremely exploitative If that $1 per hour provides you with a better income than your peers with less physical labor, then this doesn't sound exploitive at all.

(Especially if you sub-hire other people for 0.60$/hour, pocketing 0.40$/hour from each of them for ZERO effort.

Yes. In a perfect information market, this will not work. The people that can do the job for 0.40 will do it directly for that amount or they will get it for 0.60. But information is a scarcity for poor people and that makes the market very very inefficient with a lot of people getting part of the cake without adding any value.

Re: Google hired microworkers to train its controversial Project Maven AI

#32

Post by kartan »

geodel wrote: post #17
eigenvector wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It remains amazing to me how Google, which has received a huge amount of media coverage for being an awesome place to work, can simultaneously draw a line in the sand and say "people who do certain tasks aren't Googlers, and will be treated with the minimum amount of consideration required by law". I've seen it rationalized all kinds of ways like "engineers are high value and hard to recruit, so they need big salarie…

Well if people can keep justifying working for companies acting in unethical fashion. Why wouldn't companies think it is fine to bullshit their way out of phony outrage generated by media/social media.

> Well if people can keep justifying working for companies acting in unethical fashion.

I see quite often shifting the blame to employees. Does not make more sense that is the powerful companies that are expected to do the right thing instead of people with children to feed and mortgages to pay? It is way harder to do the right thing when your family wellbeing depends on it. Even worse when you need thousands of employees acting in a coordinating way to get any effect at all.

Re: Google hired microworkers to train its controversial Project Maven AI

#33

Post by IggleSniggle »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #29
demarq wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the market really dictating anything at that price or is it desperate. I don't think anyone with the power to dictate would accept a dollar an hour. The right word for this is exploitation. Google and Figure Eight directly contributing to income inequality.

Except you have captured the essence of the market, a 'fair' price (in market terms) is one that leaves the seller thinking they got too little and the buyer thinking they paid too much. They were both right at the equilibrium point. Exploitation occurs when you prevent the buyers or sellers in the market any ability to move. So if these buyers have no other opportunities or ways to change they can be exploited, if t…

There is a time limit on securing food and shelter. If you spend 20 hours on being a Turk, that’s time lost doing something that may never sustain you or provide a road to sustaining yourself. But you don’t know that until you spend the time engaging with the system. And you may find yourself stuck, chasing short term prices, having lost your ability to move in the marketplace.

Re: Google hired microworkers to train its controversial Project Maven AI

#34

Post by all_blue_chucks »

kartan wrote: post #27
all_blue_chucks wrote: post #12

This is standard practice in AI training. There are countless workers in Asia (typically) who are perfectly willing to help train your algo for less pay than Western workers, and the location where the work is performed doesn't matter at all. What would be news is if Google were paying $11/hr + social security, etc. just to have people tell an algo which pictures have a dog in them. That would put them at a competiti…

> What would be news is if Google were paying $11/hr + social security, etc. just to have people tell an algo which pictures have a dog in them. That would put them at a competitive disadvantage. Yes. Sometimes maximizing profits and having a functional society where everyone has a meal and home is incompatible. I would prefer to see that the long term viability of countries is put higher up than the short term profi…

Unless you regularly pay extra when you buy things it's silly to expect Alphabet to do so.

Re: Google hired microworkers to train its controversial Project Maven AI

#35

Post by NegativeLatency »

johntiger1 wrote: post #13
rfw wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On what grounds should an unrelated party ( the government, via labor law ) force their will on two voluntarily trading parties, blocking their transaction? Because wage slavery exists and you can't shrug your shoulders and say "well, they're choosing to work for peanuts so it's fine!".

I'm sure this was all done above-board (i.e. in compliance with the local wage laws)

I think this is a moral question, and I don't see anyone suggesting that it is a legal question.

Just because something is legal does not make it right.

Re: Google hired microworkers to train its controversial Project Maven AI

#36

Post by int_19h »

kartan wrote: post #27
all_blue_chucks wrote: post #12

This is standard practice in AI training. There are countless workers in Asia (typically) who are perfectly willing to help train your algo for less pay than Western workers, and the location where the work is performed doesn't matter at all. What would be news is if Google were paying $11/hr + social security, etc. just to have people tell an algo which pictures have a dog in them. That would put them at a competiti…

> What would be news is if Google were paying $11/hr + social security, etc. just to have people tell an algo which pictures have a dog in them. That would put them at a competitive disadvantage. Yes. Sometimes maximizing profits and having a functional society where everyone has a meal and home is incompatible. I would prefer to see that the long term viability of countries is put higher up than the short term profi…

The companies are not going to do that sort of thing out of kindness. It's up to society to set up the appropriate tax regime.

Re: Google hired microworkers to train its controversial Project Maven AI

#37

Post by ChuckMcM »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #33
ChuckMcM wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except you have captured the essence of the market, a 'fair' price (in market terms) is one that leaves the seller thinking they got too little and the buyer thinking they paid too much. They were both right at the equilibrium point. Exploitation occurs when you prevent the buyers or sellers in the market any ability to move. So if these buyers have no other opportunities or ways to change they can be exploited, if t…

There is a time limit on securing food and shelter. If you spend 20 hours on being a Turk, that’s time lost doing something that may never sustain you or provide a road to sustaining yourself. But you don’t know that until you spend the time engaging with the system. And you may find yourself stuck, chasing short term prices, having lost your ability to move in the marketplace.

I don't disagree, that is one of the interesting concepts in the book on scarcity[1]. If you're operating at the limits of your demand for a resource it affects the way to reason about that resource and can lead to counter productive choices.

That said, if you aren't constrained to only doing mechanical turk or figure 8 things, then you have the option of doing something different, or adding in other resource streams. You you trade off the time vs money aspects of different work situations to achieve longer term stability. That doesn't apply of course to people who have extenuating circumstances that cut them off from any other revenue stream and that makes them vulnerable to exploitation.

[1] "Scarcity: Why having so little means so much", Sendhil Mullainathan

Re: Google hired microworkers to train its controversial Project Maven AI

#38

Post by dlp211 »

saagarjha wrote: post #24
dlp211 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no idea what you are talking about. The vast majority of drone use is for military surveillance that have no strike capabilities, and are used to determine whether to put soldiers on the ground. Good drone surveillance is literally the best resource we have for preventing bad military outcomes. It saves lives, both American and other.

The problem is that technology developed for "good" drone surveillance can be transferred quite easily to drones with strike capabilities.

And by extension be able to make better and more accurate decisions leaving more people alive. I fail to see the issue here.

Re: Google hired microworkers to train its controversial Project Maven AI

#39

Post by saagarjha »

dlp211 wrote: post #38
saagarjha wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that technology developed for "good" drone surveillance can be transferred quite easily to drones with strike capabilities.

And by extension be able to make better and more accurate decisions leaving more people alive. I fail to see the issue here.

We seem to have an issue where we we end up targeting the wrong people, and this will make it possible to do so more accurately and easily.

Re: Google hired microworkers to train its controversial Project Maven AI

#40

Post by kiliantics »

johntiger1 wrote: post #13
rfw wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On what grounds should an unrelated party ( the government, via labor law ) force their will on two voluntarily trading parties, blocking their transaction? Because wage slavery exists and you can't shrug your shoulders and say "well, they're choosing to work for peanuts so it's fine!".

I'm sure this was all done above-board (i.e. in compliance with the local wage laws)

local wage laws are often set by governments who have been bought by corporations that benefit from the wage laws...
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