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Silicon Valley is turning scientists into exploited gig workers?

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Re: Silicon Valley is turning scientists into exploited gig workers?

#31

Post by danaris »

LeCompteSftware wrote: post #13
kloop wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be blunt, those freelancers wouldn't be doing this if they had better options Every time one of these articles come up, you can recognize that silicon valley is treating these people badly, but you should remember that everyone else is treating them worse

That shouldn't be viewed in isolation. A major root cause is essentially overproduction of academics downstream from the Cold War, and obviously the private sector is not to blame for that. But you can't ignore how much modern Big Tech has sucked away from academia compared to the tech companies of the Cold War era. Microsoft Research and Google Research have some impressive folks, but even combined they are a scient…

Describing it as "overproduction of academics" is kind of begging the question, though: is it not at least as much "deprioritization of basic research and education"?

It's not like the current demand for scientists is somehow a completely natural value, arrived at objectively and with no human biases involved.

And the private sector is heavily to blame for that. In ways that you even describe, as well as others (as another commenter noted, regulatory capture is one).

Re: Silicon Valley is turning scientists into exploited gig workers?

#32

Post by jbxntuehineoh »

kloop wrote: post #6
whatever1 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is about the $10/hour that they give to freelancers to solve math/physics/chemistry problems so that they can train the LLMs on them. I get approached by “recruiters” all the time about this.

To be blunt, those freelancers wouldn't be doing this if they had better options Every time one of these articles come up, you can recognize that silicon valley is treating these people badly, but you should remember that everyone else is treating them worse

Someone: it is bad that people are being treated poorly. We should effect changes such that they are no longer treated poorly.

Resident libertarian moron: uuuuhhhhhh have you considered that they voluntarily consented to being treated poorly? Actually this is the least poorly they could possibly be treated.

Re: Silicon Valley is turning scientists into exploited gig workers?

#33

Post by mc32 »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #26

In case you wonder where the current trends come from. “Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen have parlayed their extensive ties with the president into an unabashed assault on universities and institutional science. In private text messages leaked to The Washington Post last year, Andreessen wrote that “universities are at Ground Zero of the counterattack.” He characterized Stanford and MIT as “mainly political lobbying o…

Bureaucracy and momentum can lead to rot. It’s not a bad idea to tear things down and rebuild in order to extirpate that rot and misdirection.

Companies tend to have restructurings and stack ranking. Obviously these have their downsides too. But they also serve to shake things up and reassess direction and needs. If you’re swimming in money often you can skip this till you hit the skids.

Re: Silicon Valley is turning scientists into exploited gig workers?

#34

Post by qakHsj »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #26

In case you wonder where the current trends come from. “Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen have parlayed their extensive ties with the president into an unabashed assault on universities and institutional science. In private text messages leaked to The Washington Post last year, Andreessen wrote that “universities are at Ground Zero of the counterattack.” He characterized Stanford and MIT as “mainly political lobbying o…

Yes, Musk as well. DOGE did the firing.

Musk uses Twitter to keep up appearances and routinely posts UBI propaganda that will obviously never materialize. Why would the guy who slashes social security (except for his corporations) introduce UBI?

The genuine worry is that these people have too much money and do seem unhinged. Thiel promotes the Antichrist and the apocalypse, Musk reposts weird Grok pictures of women as dark angels with wings as well as constant pictures of his mother. Material for a Hitchcock movie.

Both should be under anti-constitutional observation in the EU just like Scientology, which was also inspired by SciFi junk.

Re: Silicon Valley is turning scientists into exploited gig workers?

#35

Post by amazingamazing »

jbxntuehineoh wrote: post #32
kloop wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be blunt, those freelancers wouldn't be doing this if they had better options Every time one of these articles come up, you can recognize that silicon valley is treating these people badly, but you should remember that everyone else is treating them worse

Someone: it is bad that people are being treated poorly. We should effect changes such that they are no longer treated poorly. Resident libertarian moron: uuuuhhhhhh have you considered that they voluntarily consented to being treated poorly? Actually this is the least poorly they could possibly be treated.

I’m curious what you are proposing exactly. I see articles even from year 2000 about PhD lifestyles being terrible during and after school.

Re: Silicon Valley is turning scientists into exploited gig workers?

#36

Post by Ar-Curunir »

mc32 wrote: post #33
WhitneyLand wrote: post #26

In case you wonder where the current trends come from. “Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen have parlayed their extensive ties with the president into an unabashed assault on universities and institutional science. In private text messages leaked to The Washington Post last year, Andreessen wrote that “universities are at Ground Zero of the counterattack.” He characterized Stanford and MIT as “mainly political lobbying o…

Bureaucracy and momentum can lead to rot. It’s not a bad idea to tear things down and rebuild in order to extirpate that rot and misdirection. Companies tend to have restructurings and stack ranking. Obviously these have their downsides too. But they also serve to shake things up and reassess direction and needs. If you’re swimming in money often you can skip this till you hit the skids.

For that to work you need someone with good intentions doing the rebuilding. Fascists like thiel and andreesen don’t have good intentions.

Re: Silicon Valley is turning scientists into exploited gig workers?

#37

Post by lapcat »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #26

In case you wonder where the current trends come from. “Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen have parlayed their extensive ties with the president into an unabashed assault on universities and institutional science. In private text messages leaked to The Washington Post last year, Andreessen wrote that “universities are at Ground Zero of the counterattack.” He characterized Stanford and MIT as “mainly political lobbying o…

Classic pulling up the ladder behind you.

Thiel went to Stanford, and Andreessen to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Re: Silicon Valley is turning scientists into exploited gig workers?

#38

Post by LtWorf »

mc32 wrote: post #33
WhitneyLand wrote: post #26

In case you wonder where the current trends come from. “Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen have parlayed their extensive ties with the president into an unabashed assault on universities and institutional science. In private text messages leaked to The Washington Post last year, Andreessen wrote that “universities are at Ground Zero of the counterattack.” He characterized Stanford and MIT as “mainly political lobbying o…

Bureaucracy and momentum can lead to rot. It’s not a bad idea to tear things down and rebuild in order to extirpate that rot and misdirection. Companies tend to have restructurings and stack ranking. Obviously these have their downsides too. But they also serve to shake things up and reassess direction and needs. If you’re swimming in money often you can skip this till you hit the skids.

https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-doge-firings-trump-federa...

Re: Silicon Valley is turning scientists into exploited gig workers?

#39

Post by superxpro12 »

mc32 wrote: post #33
WhitneyLand wrote: post #26

In case you wonder where the current trends come from. “Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen have parlayed their extensive ties with the president into an unabashed assault on universities and institutional science. In private text messages leaked to The Washington Post last year, Andreessen wrote that “universities are at Ground Zero of the counterattack.” He characterized Stanford and MIT as “mainly political lobbying o…

Bureaucracy and momentum can lead to rot. It’s not a bad idea to tear things down and rebuild in order to extirpate that rot and misdirection. Companies tend to have restructurings and stack ranking. Obviously these have their downsides too. But they also serve to shake things up and reassess direction and needs. If you’re swimming in money often you can skip this till you hit the skids.

I summarily reject any notion that our "universities" are broken. This claim has been parroted around for the better part of a decade now. IT is an obvious right wing think tank target. Sprinkle in some heritage foundation too.

The reality is, these universities were independent institutions that did their jobs to teach without bias.

Only when fox news and right wing media captured all the news sources did "universities" suddenly become "liberal thinktanks".

Our science and research institutions arent broken. It never was. It's under attack by right wing propaganda to "bring them in line".

Re: Silicon Valley is turning scientists into exploited gig workers?

#40

Post by [deleted] »

mc32 wrote: post #33
WhitneyLand wrote: post #26

In case you wonder where the current trends come from. “Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen have parlayed their extensive ties with the president into an unabashed assault on universities and institutional science. In private text messages leaked to The Washington Post last year, Andreessen wrote that “universities are at Ground Zero of the counterattack.” He characterized Stanford and MIT as “mainly political lobbying o…

Bureaucracy and momentum can lead to rot. It’s not a bad idea to tear things down and rebuild in order to extirpate that rot and misdirection. Companies tend to have restructurings and stack ranking. Obviously these have their downsides too. But they also serve to shake things up and reassess direction and needs. If you’re swimming in money often you can skip this till you hit the skids.

[deleted]
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