Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would this achieve?
Either an application of empathy to the business, or a filter to allow only completely unempathetic people into leadership.
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Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI
41–50 of 91 posts
Re: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI
#42> Workers were paid between $1.46 and $3.74 an hour, according to a Sama spokesperson. I don't like how journalists never adjust the salary when doing those conversions. Yes $1.46 in the US sounds like the most abdject poverty, but Kenya is not the US. The minimum salary in Kenya is $1.05 so even their lower bound is 39% higher than the minimum salary with their upper bound being 358% higher. For job that while psych…
To all the pissy commentators on here - Average Monthly HOUSEHOLD Income in Kenya is around $145/month [0]
The fact that Sama's STARTING SALARY is almost $300/month is staggering.
That's the equivalent of being a SWE in the US (around $140k median salary) when the median salary in this country is around $65-70k/yr.
Also, at $300/month I could hire plenty of English speaking moderators and labelers in Central/Southern Phillipines or Madhya Pradesh/Bihar and not have to deal with level of instability Kenya has. They're honestly lucky Sama even chose Kenya as a base to operate instead of going with Infosys or the Pinoy equivalent (if anyone has experience with the PH BPO industry, I'd love to learn more)
[0] - https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/bd/economy/kenyans-avera...
Re: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI
#43Humans having to do drudgery in service of AI is not exactly the vision I was presented.
Re: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI
#44> Workers were paid between $1.46 and $3.74 an hour, according to a Sama spokesperson. I don't like how journalists never adjust the salary when doing those conversions. Yes $1.46 in the US sounds like the most abdject poverty, but Kenya is not the US. The minimum salary in Kenya is $1.05 so even their lower bound is 39% higher than the minimum salary with their upper bound being 358% higher. For job that while psych…
To all the pissy commentators on here - Average Monthly HOUSEHOLD Income in Kenya is around $145/month [0] The fact that Sama's STARTING SALARY is almost $300/month is staggering. That's the equivalent of being a SWE in the US (around $140k median salary) when the median salary in this country is around $65-70k/yr. Also, at $300/month I could hire plenty of English speaking moderators and labelers in Central/Southern…
Average and median are different.
Re: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
To all the pissy commentators on here - Average Monthly HOUSEHOLD Income in Kenya is around $145/month [0] The fact that Sama's STARTING SALARY is almost $300/month is staggering. That's the equivalent of being a SWE in the US (around $140k median salary) when the median salary in this country is around $65-70k/yr. Also, at $300/month I could hire plenty of English speaking moderators and labelers in Central/Southern…
Average and median are different.
Median is an average, just like the mode, arithmetic mean, geometric mean, harmonic mean, etc., are, even though most of the time when “average” is used without specifying which one, its actually the arithmetic mean.
Re: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI
#46> Workers were paid between $1.46 and $3.74 an hour, according to a Sama spokesperson. I don't like how journalists never adjust the salary when doing those conversions. Yes $1.46 in the US sounds like the most abdject poverty, but Kenya is not the US. The minimum salary in Kenya is $1.05 so even their lower bound is 39% higher than the minimum salary with their upper bound being 358% higher. For job that while psych…
(I have edited to flesh these out a bit more, but have stopped since there is a reply)
I've kinda waffled in my opinion of outsourcing through the years, but one issue I keep coming back to is that you can trivially view it as massive, intentional wage suppression.
"It's cheaper to live there" yeah, I wonder why that might be. The numerous unbelievably wealthy global companies all doing this in the same very specific areas surely have the area's best interests at heart, and want to raise its standard of living, so it must be something else.
"No education required" because they don't have enough to fund education or provide alternatives that could let them fight back on this exploitation.
And it also provides leverage for suppressing wages elsewhere, because companies can always just offshore work that their peons are demanding fair wages for.
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And, yes, it also brings a lot of outside wealth into those areas. At high human cost, but still.
idk. I do find myself leaning more and more towards it being almost universally a bad thing though. Particularly when they keep saying it's a highly exploitative thing, when they manage to bust through to international news.
Re: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
To all the pissy commentators on here - Average Monthly HOUSEHOLD Income in Kenya is around $145/month [0] The fact that Sama's STARTING SALARY is almost $300/month is staggering. That's the equivalent of being a SWE in the US (around $140k median salary) when the median salary in this country is around $65-70k/yr. Also, at $300/month I could hire plenty of English speaking moderators and labelers in Central/Southern…
Average and median are different.
It most definetly is.
And given that Kenya's Gini coefficient is 51.3, that means the median Kenyan household is earning less than $145/month, which only shows that Sama is paying competitively at the national level.
Re: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
To all the pissy commentators on here - Average Monthly HOUSEHOLD Income in Kenya is around $145/month [0] The fact that Sama's STARTING SALARY is almost $300/month is staggering. That's the equivalent of being a SWE in the US (around $140k median salary) when the median salary in this country is around $65-70k/yr. Also, at $300/month I could hire plenty of English speaking moderators and labelers in Central/Southern…
Average and median are different.
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Re: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think anyone would dispute that these are not decent wages in Kenya. What is embarrassing is that the corporation seeks places where wages (relative to western wages) are this low (for what also amounts to the bullshit work).
What's embarrassing about it? Don't you shop around when you need to hire a contractor or buy a car?
Buying/paying local helps my local economy.
Re: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you worked for Sama and was sent to work in Kenya, would you take a salary cut just because your cost of living has reduced? Pay people what they are worth, not based on where they choose to live.
If a worker effectively performs the required tasks for $1.46/hr, this demonstrates the work's intrinsic value quite explicitly. The onus to make a higher wage to improve their lifestyle is on the individual, given the freedom they have to allocate their time as they see fit. It's not incumbent upon others or businesses to pay more for tasks if a lower-cost, higher-value solution exists.
> It's not incumbent upon others or businesses to pay more for tasks if a lower-cost, higher-value solution exists.
in the US, we've collectively decided (through elections) that there should be a minimum wage, from which it follows that we've also decided that the "wages have no bottom" argument, i.e. they should be able to go as low as possible without limit, is unethical and detrimental to society.