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Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

reuters.com

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Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#461

Post by isodev »

nikkwong wrote: post #434
isodev wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know right, so much pain and horror has been unleashed in the world by Meta… I have zero sympathy for their employees. Someone should’ve said no to developing this tech in the first place but here we are.

Former meta employee. It's not like people have an unlimited number of places to work, even if they have Meta on their resume. Many of my colleagues (and myself included) had struggled in the job market in the past before landing at Meta. If it's work for Meta, or suffer more tumult in the hiring market; it's easy to understand why many might decide to take the offer even with the moral implications. I used to bring…

What Meta does (and here I want to be clear that you can replace Meta with Apple, Microsoft, Google, Palantir...) is eventually public knowledge, profusely discussed even on HN. This means substantial amount of people have been aware, for decades.

And even if "just quit" is not an option - why not push for policy to regulate these corps? Why is it that after all this time, these same corps now also own at least 1 branch of the US government?

And when the EU/Australia/China.. tries to regulate punish those corps, suddenly everyone comes out on HN to explain protectionism, overreach, some -ism, and "actually we need to give them the benefit of the doubt" etc... why not support that momentum?

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#462

Post by gyomu »

eloisius wrote: post #414

Yesterday I was doomscrolling computer vision related stuff on LinkedIn. I hate it, but often looking for freelancing ops in CV. A video appeared in my feed of some South Asian laborers sewing in a garment factory. All of them had cameras mounted on their heads. Otherwise, they looked exactly like you’d imagine beleaguered sweatshop workers would look. Exhausted, dull expressions looking into the camera as whoever wa…

We’ve built a global economic system around “make number go up”, and we have been insanely successful at it - at the cost of everything else.

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#463

Post by lofaszvanitt »

DocTomoe wrote: post #453
Xmd5a wrote: post #445

Makes me think of how the US army trains their waterboarders: by waterboarding them first. The goal is to manufacture a lack of empathy along the lines of: "why should I treat this person better than I was treated".

You'd think the natural result would be 'This was horrible; this trainer is a psychopath. I am not going to do that to another human being.' But then, we're talking about humans, especially the violence-enjoying strata of humans here.

Just like chefs... a lot of lowlives lurk there too.

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#464

Post by sathish316 »

A job is something where you exchange Skills and Time for Money. Most self-respecting creators/workers will not agree to trade Skills, Time, Privacy, Self-esteem for Money.

Last time I checked, Facebook is not a thing other than for watching AI generated content, Instagram is still a thing to watch mind-numbing content and get distracted from other problems by doomscrolling.

It’s same as language translators and RLHF annotators doing work to contribute to AI training data. Is Facebook or Instagram solving a problem for humanity that’s worth selling your soul? Won’t a job that can be automated with AI training data of clicks and typing, markdown files, next function prediction with no coherence be significantly worse than a job that requires creativity?

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#465

Post by gamerslexus »

DharmaPolice wrote: post #459
gamerslexus wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you so sure that replacing humans is "enormous social good"? For whom is it good, exactly? Also, capturing keystrokes and mouse movements only when at work and on work computer isn't really constant surveillance. Capturing all our code, text, photo and video (made at work or at home) seems worse and we don't bat an eye.

I work in a non-profit sector, if they could save money by replacing me they could use the money elsewhere where they desperately need money. So lots of people would benefit. That same principle wouldn't apply if I worked for some mega corp of course. But the discussion was about Meta employees in general. They're heavily involved in the second type of surveillance that you alude to.

They are somewhat involved but when AI is mentioned Meta's thing is far down the list...

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#466

Post by Balgair »

0) The odds that any of this massive amount of data is ever used by Meta for anything are very low. Less so that anyone will actually look at it, including lawyers.

1) With vibe coding being so effective, Meta employees have easy ways to poison the data set in 2) What could they possibly want or create that would justify the bad press and employee disengagement from work devices? Better spam bot detection? They have to have some of the best already.

3) No really, Meta employees have the opportunity to really mess with the data in quite humorous ways without any pushback (see 0)

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#467

Post by wartywhoa23 »

Blackthorn wrote: post #169
dagmx wrote: post #42

This is going to be a huge chilling factor for employees. You’d no longer be able to disent, or discuss anything non-work related with even the slightest expectation of privacy. Yes they could have accessed logs before but there’s a difference between directed checking after incidents and active surveillance at scale.

Couldn't have happened to a more deserving group of people. My irony detector is sparking so badly I think it's about to blow.

It always happens to the most deserving group of people before it happens to you, and then there's no one to voice any concerns about your own fate, because they all got what you supposed they deserved.

TL;DR: The history of fascism and Nazism in the 1930s Europe.

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#468

Post by Darwins_Toffees »

lanyard-textile wrote: post #364
pjerem wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk in the US but in France you are allowed to have personal data on your work computer. Though you have to label it as personal (like creating a « Personal » folder or label and your employer can still access it in case of suspicion but he must do it in your physical presence and accompanied with a witness, generally a representative of the employees. So you theoretically don’t have full privacy on this computer but…

I don't think we have sweeping regulations about it, at least in California. Most companies I've worked at have a policy of some "reasonable personal use" being permitted. The concern is usually focused on the other way around: Companies do not want their IP on your personal machines. They can certainly look at whatever is on their own machines, however, regardless if it is your personal data or not. One large caveat…

Can depend on the field too. I work in drug discovery and if the FDA was to request data that requires my computer they would have access to everything I had on it...Including my texts if I happened to log in to my personal apple account since it's a Mac.

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#469

Post by le-mark »

beloch wrote: post #101

For those saying that this is fine because company computers are company property... This is like going to work in a drug-lab where everyone is required to strip naked to ensure no "product" can be smuggled out. It's a zero trust environment at first blush, with the added terror of it being used to replace you with AI. People working naked in a drug lab have more job security than meta employees and an equivalent lev…

> This is like going to work in a drug-lab where everyone is required to strip naked to ensure no "product" can be smuggled out.

I believe this has been the reality of diamond mining.

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#470

Post by le-mark »

asdff wrote: post #28
ndegruchy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same company is trying to build an AI Zuckerberg...

It is going to be funny in a few decades when zuck transfers his shares and voting rights and estate to the ai bot, and makes himself functionally immortal. Or at least a sort of commissioned renaissance painting version of himself, probably. Imagine in 300 years we are still ruled by zuck, ellison, bezos, musk, thiel, et al, just in ai model form empowered by estates worth more than entire nations and legal protecti…

There was a sci-fi story that explores this idea. The person who wanted to live past their death had to transfer their assets to a trust controlled by the person derived AI (uploaded consciousness in this story) in a roundabout manner. The person was legally dead.

Edit “Mr. Boy”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Boy

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