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
#2[deleted]
Re: Google hired microworkers to train its controversial Project Maven AI
#3> he workers were hired through a crowdsourcing gig company outfit called Figure Eight, which pays as little at $1 an hour for people to perform short, seemingly mindless tasks.
Wow. Shouldn't there be a 'minimum gig fee' for this type of work? I mean many tasks may take a few seconds for a few cents, but if you work a solid hour and only earn $1 gross income, that seems extremely exploitative (even if the recipients are in Burundi).
Re: Google hired microworkers to train its controversial Project Maven AI
#4They need better terminology. "microworkers" sounds bad, like they're under-payed (they are).
Try "organic AI" or "incentivized crowdsourcing".
Re: Google hired microworkers to train its controversial Project Maven AI
#5> he workers were hired through a crowdsourcing gig company outfit called Figure Eight, which pays as little at $1 an hour for people to perform short, seemingly mindless tasks. Wow. Shouldn't there be a 'minimum gig fee' for this type of work? I mean many tasks may take a few seconds for a few cents, but if you work a solid hour and only earn $1 gross income, that seems extremely exploitative (even if the recipients…
I've picked up a few gigs on Mechanical Turk. You pick up the tasks that are worth your time (that you are qualified for). If you don't like the microtask for the price offered move onto the next one.
If the entity offering the microtasks (gig) don't see enough interest in their tasks, they can raise the bid.
I think that's extremely fair. Let the market dictate the price per task. How do you know what the right price should be?
Re: Google hired microworkers to train its controversial Project Maven AI
#6> he workers were hired through a crowdsourcing gig company outfit called Figure Eight, which pays as little at $1 an hour for people to perform short, seemingly mindless tasks. Wow. Shouldn't there be a 'minimum gig fee' for this type of work? I mean many tasks may take a few seconds for a few cents, but if you work a solid hour and only earn $1 gross income, that seems extremely exploitative (even if the recipients…
On what grounds should an unrelated party (furyg3) force their will on two voluntarily trading parties, blocking their (presumably mutually beneficial, since voluntary) transaction?
That's a strangely oppressive, i-know-best-what's-good-for-you position.
Re: Google hired microworkers to train its controversial Project Maven AI
#7> he workers were hired through a crowdsourcing gig company outfit called Figure Eight, which pays as little at $1 an hour for people to perform short, seemingly mindless tasks. Wow. Shouldn't there be a 'minimum gig fee' for this type of work? I mean many tasks may take a few seconds for a few cents, but if you work a solid hour and only earn $1 gross income, that seems extremely exploitative (even if the recipients…
On what grounds should an unrelated party ( furyg3 ) force their will on two voluntarily trading parties, blocking their (presumably mutually beneficial, since voluntary) transaction? That's a strangely oppressive, i-know-best-what's-good-for-you position.
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!".
Re: Google hired microworkers to train its controversial Project Maven AI
#8mTurk, Crowd Flower, Spare 5, etc. are all popular platforms for gathering labeled training data. It’s a race to the bottom for lowest price per label while maintaining reasonably consistent quality.
Re: Google hired microworkers to train its controversial Project Maven AI
#9It's worrisome to me that a U.S. company helping the U.S. military is viewed as so controversial that it would cease to finish that work. I'm glad Amazon and Microsoft, among big tech cos, haven't caved in like Google has.
And yet Google has the gall to spend $5m on a Super Bowl ad touting how it helps veterans. Ridiculous.
Re: Google hired microworkers to train its controversial Project Maven AI
#10> he workers were hired through a crowdsourcing gig company outfit called Figure Eight, which pays as little at $1 an hour for people to perform short, seemingly mindless tasks. Wow. Shouldn't there be a 'minimum gig fee' for this type of work? I mean many tasks may take a few seconds for a few cents, but if you work a solid hour and only earn $1 gross income, that seems extremely exploitative (even if the recipients…
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 salaries and perks, but an HVAC technician at a datacentre doesn't" but it all falls apart when you consider that nearly all white collar professionals at Google get generous salaries, benefits and bonuses, even those in saturated fields like law, marketing or HR and a trade worker at a datacentre actually is directly working on Google's business.