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Uber will offer gig work like AI data labeling to drivers while not on the road

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Re: Uber will offer gig work like AI data labeling to drivers while not on the road

#41

in most regions Uber drivers are being paid an hourly wage so yeah I think this makes sense. They can answer support calls too. Despite getting an Uber hourly wage many game the system by taking DoorDash and Lyft orders while on the job. Should your employer tolerate you working another job while you are being paid to do yours?

>> Should your employer tolerate you working another job while you are being paid to do yours?

When the company fights hard & dirty for decades to classify you as a contractor to externalize the majority of the costs in their business model? Yes.

Re: Uber will offer gig work like AI data labeling to drivers while not on the road

#42
post #6

Somebody really needs to put a stop to what Uber and the like are doing. They are doing their best to destroy basic labor protections, by circumventing employing their workers. Why are countries just allowing them to clown on established worker protections? If you want to pay someone to do something employ them . The roll out of the gig economy is only viable because it allows companies to push costs on to the labor…

> If you want to pay someone to do something employ them. There is a purpose for casual/contract labor. If I want my lawn mowed, some basement junk hauled away, or my house painted, I want someone on contract/gig to do something for me, but I sure don’t want to hire an employee. How that person chooses to relate to an employer (whether to be self-employed or work for someone else) is their business, not a concern of…

> How that person chooses to relate to an employer … is their business, not a concern of mine.

I could try and score points and ask if you would be okay if the lawn employee was prison-labor—if you would be okay employing them (money to go to the prison, of course).

My point though simply is that I don't think anyone should be okay hiring someone whose labor may be being exploited.

I was going to say that I don't think that is ever the case with lawn care but remembered that when I was maybe 10 years old, a neighbor had a lawn business during the Kansas summertime and he "hired" me and my sister (she was 9) to come with him (with his own two kids) to mow lawns for his business. I mean he bought us lunch at a fast food place and we made maybe $0.50 an hour—we were happy to have pocket money in order to buy candy at the drug store. I suppose we were being exploited though. ;-)

But anyway, I ramble.

Re: Uber will offer gig work like AI data labeling to drivers while not on the road

#43
post #6

Somebody really needs to put a stop to what Uber and the like are doing. They are doing their best to destroy basic labor protections, by circumventing employing their workers. Why are countries just allowing them to clown on established worker protections? If you want to pay someone to do something employ them . The roll out of the gig economy is only viable because it allows companies to push costs on to the labor…

> If you want to pay someone to do something employ them. There is a purpose for casual/contract labor. If I want my lawn mowed, some basement junk hauled away, or my house painted, I want someone on contract/gig to do something for me, but I sure don’t want to hire an employee. How that person chooses to relate to an employer (whether to be self-employed or work for someone else) is their business, not a concern of…

>> How that person chooses to relate to an employer (whether to be self-employed or work for someone else) is their business, not a concern of mine.

I think it will be, when the same strategies & policies come up the foodchain to your work that you probably think could never be modeled like this.

Re: Uber will offer gig work like AI data labeling to drivers while not on the road

#44
post #8

The whole "AI revolution" feels distopian opposite from what I'd naively thought it would do. My ideal would be a world in which boring, heavy, dangerous, etc work is replaced by machines. Giving humans time and opportunity to pursue creative, fun, stimulating or intellectually challenging tasks. In which only legit people, and never spammers or scammers get me on the phone. Where I don't have to juggle appointments,…

>My ideal would be a world in which boring, heavy, dangerous, etc work is replaced by machines. Giving humans time and opportunity to pursue creative, fun, stimulating or intellectually challenging tasks.

That didn't happen at any previous industrial revolution step either. Instead work for humans became more mechanical and soul-crushing.

Farmers ended up having to work on some factory line for 12 hours. Small store owners and employees were turned into huge chain cogs. People "freed" from household work, were send to the cubicle.

Re: Uber will offer gig work like AI data labeling to drivers while not on the road

#45

So not Star Trek, we’re doing Corpo.

We always where going to, a star trek like society benefits the maximum number of people at the expense of curtailing the excesses of the wealthiest people.

The wealthy people don't like that, why would they and since they have a disproportionate amount of power via their wealth they oppose it successfully.

They'll keep the bread and circuses going and keep refining what is the minimum amount of bread they can get away with until they cross the line and then things get whacky for a bit, it resets and then they start taking the bread away again.

Re: Uber will offer gig work like AI data labeling to drivers while not on the road

#46
post #8

The whole "AI revolution" feels distopian opposite from what I'd naively thought it would do. My ideal would be a world in which boring, heavy, dangerous, etc work is replaced by machines. Giving humans time and opportunity to pursue creative, fun, stimulating or intellectually challenging tasks. In which only legit people, and never spammers or scammers get me on the phone. Where I don't have to juggle appointments,…

I get where you're coming from — the naively thought part. You may though just have to get a good deal more cynical. Perhaps you already are. Tech fascinated me as a kid—and, because of my age, we're talking Apollo-era tech, promises of a moon base, the introduction of the Metric system is U.S. schools, elementary school libraries full of science books for kids on chemistry, electricity, model rocketry, etc. I have c…

Completely agree with every word except for

> tech for tech's sake

what we're seeing is tech for greed's sake, not tech's sake.

Re: Uber will offer gig work like AI data labeling to drivers while not on the road

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're an adult professional, yeah. Helps smooth out the home insurance if something happens and they get injured on your property or damage your property.

“I want my AI to handle my contracts so I can mow lawns in peace”. Ok now I see how that works! Thanks!

How far away are we from AI running the business (marketing, contracts, payment, scheduling, etc) while the humans compete with each other to do the lawn mowing for subsistence food & shelter? Put one of these tech bro CEOs in charge long enough for the AI to get good enough to do the top-level coordination and then recycle them into energy to power it all, and we're good to go!

Re: Uber will offer gig work like AI data labeling to drivers while not on the road

#48
post #8

The whole "AI revolution" feels distopian opposite from what I'd naively thought it would do. My ideal would be a world in which boring, heavy, dangerous, etc work is replaced by machines. Giving humans time and opportunity to pursue creative, fun, stimulating or intellectually challenging tasks. In which only legit people, and never spammers or scammers get me on the phone. Where I don't have to juggle appointments,…

I always believe technological advance eventually bring us to the point that 1) the elites have total control of all resources, and 2) impossible for ordinary people to rise up and clean the slate. We are very close to it.

> impossible for ordinary people to rise up and clean the slate

Already is. Look at Russia, China and other authoritarian states. Hell, even most democratic ones.

Re: Uber will offer gig work like AI data labeling to drivers while not on the road

#49
post #8

The whole "AI revolution" feels distopian opposite from what I'd naively thought it would do. My ideal would be a world in which boring, heavy, dangerous, etc work is replaced by machines. Giving humans time and opportunity to pursue creative, fun, stimulating or intellectually challenging tasks. In which only legit people, and never spammers or scammers get me on the phone. Where I don't have to juggle appointments,…

Funny. I don't claim to be a person of extraordinary intellect or a tech-visionary. However, the very first time in my life I heard the argument "robots are bad because they will take all the jobs" I immediately realized "oh, so 'who will own the robots' is the question we have to think carefully about". This was in the mid-nineties and I was about 10.

Re: Uber will offer gig work like AI data labeling to drivers while not on the road

#50
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to pay someone to do something employ them. There is a purpose for casual/contract labor. If I want my lawn mowed, some basement junk hauled away, or my house painted, I want someone on contract/gig to do something for me, but I sure don’t want to hire an employee. How that person chooses to relate to an employer (whether to be self-employed or work for someone else) is their business, not a concern of…

The gig economy is neither contract work nor casual work. >If I want my lawn mowed, some basement junk hauled away, or my house painted, I want someone on contract/gig to do something for me, but I sure don’t want to hire an employee. Error of categories. This simply is not the same. It is normal employment in everything but name. Uber is replacing the taxi industry, which can not compete, because the taxi industry h…

You know that when you cut the last two words off the quote “is not the universal answer to Uber and non-Uber” and respond to only the part you quoted that it leaves the impression that you’re arguing in bad faith, right?
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