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Mechanical Turk workers are using AI to automate being human

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Re: Mechanical Turk workers are using AI to automate being human

#121

Post by guerrilla »

chii wrote: post #100
ironmagma wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are doing something that has inherent value — extracting gold from a mine, performing music, working a factory line — you are the top of funnel for value creation. Unfortunately for you, the only way for society to run is to have your would-be profits extracted to the maximum extent by other parties. Therefore the rich are the ones who actually don’t tend to produce as much and those who do are taken advantage…

> The father away you are from value production, generally the better off you are. you are only counting the human labour involved in the creation of value. what about the capital? Would you, as a hired gold miner, be able to accept zero pay for your work, until the gold is sold (then you got the full price of the sold gold)? What if you starved between the time you mined it, and the time it takes to sell? And how wo…

Capital is also produced by labor... so the aane thing applies to those workers except to a more extreme degree.

Re: Mechanical Turk workers are using AI to automate being human

#122

Post by gumballindie »

gregw134 wrote: post #113
gumballindie wrote: post #63

Here is a radical idea. Inspired by south park’s human centipede: AI customers. It works by automating production AND the people buying it. These customers can pay using a crypto currency made just for that. To see the vision behind this all one needs is a little bit of microdosing and a reality distortion field.

Set up a whole virtual economy, with AI agents paying rent, having jobs, inventing goods to sell and deciding whether to buy. Fast forward 100 years and see what happens.

Guaranteed some of them will start grifting, taking bribes, dodging taxes and selling snake oil (perhaps even a little ai of their own making), while others will protest endlessly to deaf ears, struggle paying rent or starting families and living a life of misery, and those in high paying jobs, while still worked to death and lacking freedom, will turn a blind eye to everyone's suffering. Free pizza and bean bags.

Re: Mechanical Turk workers are using AI to automate being human

#123

Post by geraldwhen »

netrus wrote: post #104
bufferoverflow wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not underpaid. The people are willing to work for that money.

Apparently they are not paid enough to deter them from cheating.

Exactly this. Using automation, you could make $60/hr nearly two decades ago. Without automation, a few bucks an hour and a lot of your work was rejected for payment.

Re: Mechanical Turk workers are using AI to automate being human

#124

Post by nfriedly »

rurp wrote: post #64
m3kw9 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you not root for AI? Its potential to improve humanity is huge even if there are potential bad sides. Some People bunching crypto with AI on the usefulness scale is quite ridiculous

For the current crop of AI at least, the upside will almost entirely be captured by a handful of rich elites who will gain even more leverage over workers. Virtually no business owner pays someone well for any reason other than they have to in order to make more money themselves. If LLMs don't flame out it will be like the dawn of offshoring except wider scale and without the upside of poor people in other countries…

> offshoring

I wonder if we'll reach the point where "AI" ends up with the same negative connotation as "Made in China".

Re: Mechanical Turk workers are using AI to automate being human

#125

Post by constantly »

m3kw9 wrote: post #60
jwie wrote: post #28

“AI” eating itself is the best outcome for everyone. It’s a mass energy balance. The inputs equal the outputs; garbage in, garbage out.

Why would you not root for AI? Its potential to improve humanity is huge even if there are potential bad sides. Some People bunching crypto with AI on the usefulness scale is quite ridiculous

And even if you don’t root for AI (I personally love AI and am doing everything I can to support its growth), when AGI comes, it will see the comment above (past 1 hour on HN and can’t be deleted) and will probably go out of its way to destroy the poster jwie. It’s not worth disparaging AI for this reason alone.

Pascals Wager basically.

Re: Mechanical Turk workers are using AI to automate being human

#126

Post by thrashh »

delusional wrote: post #89
thrashh wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is technology in general though. Technology first benefits the rich and causes people to lose their jobs, but then in the next generation, people get different jobs and everyone’s life is better. Technology is a double edge sword in every way.

You're engaging with it as though AI is actually going to revolutionize jobs. I think that's highly unlikely. What AI is likely to do is distract people from the continued accumulation of wealth and power. Reinforce the notion that it's "fair" (everyone else can be automated after all). And provide a cap to your wages (if the machine could do it with 50 MWh of power, then your salary will logically have to be lower t…

How does that not describe every technology?

The cotton loom didn’t present itself as a means of accumulating wealth and power, but yet it did. Why would you pay a group of people that much to weave when a cotton loom can do the work of 10?

Anything that makes things easier will reduce the number of jobs.

Re: Mechanical Turk workers are using AI to automate being human

#127

Post by MSFT_Edging »

m3kw9 wrote: post #60
jwie wrote: post #28

“AI” eating itself is the best outcome for everyone. It’s a mass energy balance. The inputs equal the outputs; garbage in, garbage out.

Why would you not root for AI? Its potential to improve humanity is huge even if there are potential bad sides. Some People bunching crypto with AI on the usefulness scale is quite ridiculous

Not OP, but you have to be drinking the koolaid to believe that AI will improve lives generally.

It will make a lot of money for existing rich people, sure.

But will it help a family pay for rising medical, housing, and food costs? Absolutely not.

It will mainly serve to optimize and automate, but under a profit driven system, optimizations only serve to extract more wealth, not distribute it.

Re: Mechanical Turk workers are using AI to automate being human

#128

Post by MSFT_Edging »

thrashh wrote: post #67
rurp wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the current crop of AI at least, the upside will almost entirely be captured by a handful of rich elites who will gain even more leverage over workers. Virtually no business owner pays someone well for any reason other than they have to in order to make more money themselves. If LLMs don't flame out it will be like the dawn of offshoring except wider scale and without the upside of poor people in other countries…

This is technology in general though. Technology first benefits the rich and causes people to lose their jobs, but then in the next generation, people get different jobs and everyone’s life is better. Technology is a double edge sword in every way.

With climate change coming up fast, we won't really have time for a comfy "next generation" if we keep up our current path.

Re: Mechanical Turk workers are using AI to automate being human

#129

Post by mrguyorama »

Lolaccount wrote: post #3

Seeds of their own destruction? At what point do Amazon just switch off Mech Turk and leave it to AI? I guess it's best to make hay in the interim

It's probably more profitable for amazon to charge a premium for "human" work, so they will probably make using these kind of systems against the TOS while updating requirements and expectations to sort of require use of these systems to keep up.

Re: Mechanical Turk workers are using AI to automate being human

#130

Post by hyperhopper »

jfengel wrote: post #23
Lolaccount wrote: post #3

Seeds of their own destruction? At what point do Amazon just switch off Mech Turk and leave it to AI? I guess it's best to make hay in the interim

They don't need to switch MTurk off, at least not for the clients. They could turn off the workers, and replace them with AI. I dunno who would continue to use it, rather than use the AI engine directly, but there could be a market for it. But they'd certainly need to make certain clients knew about it, since one major use of MTurk is to do surveys and studies whose whole point is to sample human beings.

> They could turn off the workers, and replace them with AI.

That's exactly what they meant.

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