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Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI

theguardian.com

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Re: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI

#51

Post by bitshiftfaced »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #44
alephnerd wrote: post #42

Earlier 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.

Income distributions have fat tails, so the median is less than the average, which only amplifies grandparent poster's point.

Re: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI

#52

Post by poisonborz »

Somebody once told me "yeah, without some slavery, THAT also wouldn't work", and I see it so often in products and concepts around us day by day. This isn't about the income gap. It's extracting work from a certain class for pennies, and create immense wealth from it on the other side of the globe without those people even knowing what it is about, let alone take part or benefit from it long term.

After centuries what we achieved is more sustainable, scaleable slavery.

Re: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI

#54

Post by version_five »

poisonborz wrote: post #52

Somebody once told me "yeah, without some slavery, THAT also wouldn't work", and I see it so often in products and concepts around us day by day. This isn't about the income gap. It's extracting work from a certain class for pennies, and create immense wealth from it on the other side of the globe without those people even knowing what it is about, let alone take part or benefit from it long term. After centuries wha…

Yeah outsourcing is terrible for the countries being outsourced to

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

Re: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI

#55

Post by KptMarchewa »

Groxx wrote: post #46
belval wrote: post #9

> 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…

It's almost exactly a good thing though.

>"It's cheaper to live there" yeah, I wonder why that might be.

It's incoherent reply - if a job does not require high qualifications, besides language knowledge, going for cheapest place is the obvious thing.

>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.

They are all paying more than local alternatives, thereby increasing local wages.

> "No education required" because they don't have enough to fund education

3 dollars per hour is more than Polish minimum wage 10 years ago, and we funded education with much, much less. But I guess no foreign company should invest here? It would leave us in a way better place for sure.

>And it also provides leverage for suppressing wages elsewhere, because companies can always just offshore work that their peons are demanding fair wages for.

Once the same propaganda you're spewing was playing for Asia. It turned out globalization really made them comparatively rich. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/...

Now it's time for Africa. The same argument is now even more incoherent - where's the cheaper place?

>And, yes, it also brings a lot of outside wealth into those areas. At high human cost, but still.

At the cost of... work.

Re: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI

#56

Post by skim_milk »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #32
belval wrote: post #9

> 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…

idk man psychologically scarring sounds pretty bad to me that's not normally a thing people are wanting from their job.

Emergency responders have to deal with what I'd imagine the typical person would consider traumatic but we've agreed that their jobs are necessary in order for society to be efficacious. Not everyone has the same physiological response to disturbing content and it would appear people that take up these distressful emergency jobs are less likely to ever even have any traumatic stress responses in some studies IIRC.

Maybe up to 33% of the world's population would find reading text triggers traumatic stress responses if I had to make an educated guess - not to diminish their experiences. But I'd imagine most people would just find the job boring or somewhat nauseating.

Should be trivial to significantly reduce human cost without completely removing their jobs anyway.

Re: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI

#57

Post by Groxx »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #55
Groxx wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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…

It's almost exactly a good thing though. >"It's cheaper to live there" yeah, I wonder why that might be. It's incoherent reply - if a job does not require high qualifications, besides language knowledge, going for cheapest place is the obvious thing. >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…

Pretty much all this summarizes as "yes, it's valuable work to the individual".

Broadly I agree - a lot of it is clearly a pretty big positive.

But that doesn't make it not exploitative. For the same reasons that wealthy places don't generally allow child labor and have worker safety and environmental protections... but outsourced stuff frequently does not. The companies outsourcing are clearly aware of this, but most do or allow things that are blatantly illegal where they're headquartered.

Not all of them! There are clear benefits to colocating labor (manufacturing in particular) and some legitimately seem to be spending the money and effort to make sure it's being done ethically. A strong majority very clearly does not though, and outsourced moderation seems to consistently fall into the uncaring category.

Re: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI

#58

Post by baron816 »

Groxx wrote: post #46
belval wrote: post #9

> 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…

> 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.

That’s the point of capitalism—-it works if you have only your own interests at heart. Wealthy Global Company A enters a market and makes huge profits. Wealth Global Company B (and maybe C, D, E, F, etc) sees they’re making those profits, and enters that market too. Workers then have choices of where they can work and can demand higher wages and better conditions.

> it also provides leverage for suppressing wages elsewhere

Country A has average wages of $40/hr, and Country B has average wages of $0.40/hr. If companies in Country A move some jobs to Country B and wages in Country A fall to $39/hr and wages in Country B rise to $1.40/hr, but prices also fall in Country A to make up for the fall in lost wages, is the world really worse off?

> At high human cost

What’s the human cost of not having available jobs? It means children don’t get schooling or vaccines. No access to social mobility. If you get sick from easily curable diseases, you’ll likely just die. No chance of retirement—you just work in the fields until you die.

If you want to see the benefits of “outsourcing” these types of low skill jobs, look at Bangladesh. The country has gone from one of the poorest places on Earth, to closing in on middle income status in about two decades.

Re: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI

#59

Post by giraffe_lady »

skim_milk wrote: post #56
giraffe_lady wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

idk man psychologically scarring sounds pretty bad to me that's not normally a thing people are wanting from their job.

Emergency responders have to deal with what I'd imagine the typical person would consider traumatic but we've agreed that their jobs are necessary in order for society to be efficacious. Not everyone has the same physiological response to disturbing content and it would appear people that take up these distressful emergency jobs are less likely to ever even have any traumatic stress responses in some studies IIRC. Ma…

You don't perceive any significant difference between emergency work and AI training moderation?

Re: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI

#60

Post by freefaler »

alephnerd wrote: post #42
belval wrote: post #9

> 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…

It doesn't look like he couldn't have left the job he found unsuitable. Especially in Kenya, where the rule of law and contract enforcement are not that stringent... If I don't like blood, I better not work at a hospital or a butcher shop. Content moderation is hard and it's not for everyone.
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