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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?

#71

Post by palmotea »

fedeb95 wrote: post #55

Ironic how a libertarian would impose his personal views on "the system". Doesn't work? Let it die. Too many PhDs? Perhaps, let them search for a job. If they're indeed too many, a generation of plumbers etc. will emerge naturally. No one is impeding their businesses, if anything governments worldwide are aiding big technology companies in any way possible.

> Ironic how a libertarian would impose his personal views on "the system". Doesn't work? Let it die. Too many PhDs? Perhaps, let them search for a job. If they're indeed too many, a generation of plumbers etc. will emerge naturally. No one is impeding their businesses, if anything governments worldwide are aiding big technology companies in any way possible.

It's not ironic when you understand that libertarianism is really about maximizing personal liberty for an individual, and that often means constraining the liberty of others who would stand in their way.

It's the most libertarian thing for millions of people to have very constrained lives under the rule of some wealthy person who gets to do whatever he wants.

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

#72

Post by mnky9800n »

malfist wrote: post #50
glitchc wrote: post #29

The problem is really one of supply and demand. Whatever SV talking heads say is a post-hoc rationalization on top of this basic fact. We have too many PhDs (I say this as one). It's never been easier to get one. Most PhD topics are incremental and derivative whereas they should be seminal and ground-breaking. Unfortunately, with credential inflation, this cycle will escalate. Soon people will complete two just to qu…

Do you think the boundary of science isn't pushed forward incrementally? Not every person can be an Einstein, hell, not every generation has an Einstein. And Einstein couldn't have done what he did for science without the foundation of those "incremental and derivative" advancements. This nonsense falls apart at the barest inspection. Science IS BORING. And it should be. Take for example a muscle building study that…

Anyone can cherry pick examples to support that science is incremental (or not). The current structure of academic science struggles to reward creative thinking, struggles to support eccentric thinking, and struggles to move outside of their ivory domain based towers. It’s both a bureaucratic issue and one of hierarchy and power within science itself. I have seen far too many physicists resist changing how they teach because they have already figured out how to educate how dare you question them. I have seen far too many seismologists refuse to use non acoustic data sets because why wouldnt seismic data be enough? These are often even young people who refuse to step outside of their domains point of view perhaps from fear that they will never secure a faculty position. Additionally it is often times driven by university politics and finances. For example, Most R1 universities large revenue source is grant overheads, and yet most faculty have little say on how those overheads are spent because university democracies and leadership have been replaced with administrators building bureaucracies. I say this as a scientist for 15 years whose published over 30 papers, won grants, advised phds and postdocs, etc. the system would do well to change if only to give more time back to scientists to do science they find interesting instead of what can be keyworded in to grant applications.

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

#73

Post by xienze »

p_j_w wrote: post #69
xienze wrote: post #43

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. If you're talking about DataAnnotation, specialized stuff like that is $30/hour and up.

It seems pretty obvious that GP wasn’t saying $10/hr to mean literally $10/hr, but were exaggerating to imply that people were getting chump change for this work. $30/hr is still chump change and not enough to buy oneself any reasonable quality of life for the majority of the population.

Well, it's something. PhD students have always been pretty poorly paid because there's a massive oversupply of them. At least they have an additional source of income available to them.

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

#74

Post by Frieren »

glitchc wrote: post #29

The problem is really one of supply and demand. Whatever SV talking heads say is a post-hoc rationalization on top of this basic fact. We have too many PhDs (I say this as one). It's never been easier to get one. Most PhD topics are incremental and derivative whereas they should be seminal and ground-breaking. Unfortunately, with credential inflation, this cycle will escalate. Soon people will complete two just to qu…

> The problem is really one of supply and demand.

I would blame the monopolization of the economy. A few corporations purchasing big chunks of the industry control the job market create a bottleneck where supply of jobs is controlled by a few corporations. Once all jobs are controlled by a few decision makers the precarious work conditions, diminished salaries, abuses, etc. come naturally.

> Unfortunately, with credential inflation, this cycle will escalate.

Even if everybody had high education, companies would still compete for the best employees. There is no competition for employees because large corporations have agreed to not do so.

Apple, Google, Intel... discussed no-poach as a way to keep salaries low. Has anything changed?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

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

#75

Post by swed420 »

impostervt wrote: post #64

Honest question, not really related to the story: What makes someone "exploited"? Most of us trade our time for money, so at what point does the money become too little and be considered exploitative? Are all gig workers exploited? Didn't they make a rational choice that this is the best opportunity for themselves? It certainly feels wrong, the low wages. I'm just wondering where the threshold is.

Cost of living varies by locale and changes over time, so you won't find a single number to answer your question. But it shouldn't be hard to determine what is a comfortable standard of living and what is not for any given time/place.

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

#76

Post by tpm »

impostervt wrote: post #64

Honest question, not really related to the story: What makes someone "exploited"? Most of us trade our time for money, so at what point does the money become too little and be considered exploitative? Are all gig workers exploited? Didn't they make a rational choice that this is the best opportunity for themselves? It certainly feels wrong, the low wages. I'm just wondering where the threshold is.

> What makes someone "exploited"?

According to Marx it's basically always you are selling your time/labor for money because you are paid less than the value of the labor. The employer keeps the surplus.

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

#78

Post by malfist »

mnky9800n wrote: post #72
malfist wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the boundary of science isn't pushed forward incrementally? Not every person can be an Einstein, hell, not every generation has an Einstein. And Einstein couldn't have done what he did for science without the foundation of those "incremental and derivative" advancements. This nonsense falls apart at the barest inspection. Science IS BORING. And it should be. Take for example a muscle building study that…

Anyone can cherry pick examples to support that science is incremental (or not). The current structure of academic science struggles to reward creative thinking, struggles to support eccentric thinking, and struggles to move outside of their ivory domain based towers. It’s both a bureaucratic issue and one of hierarchy and power within science itself. I have seen far too many physicists resist changing how they teach…

> Anyone can cherry pick examples to support that science is incremental

This is not a rebuttal of what I stated. You dismiss my data and provide no data of your own, just feelings. I appreciate what you're trying to say, but bring data or else we can't discuss it meaningfully.

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

#79

Post by laughingcurve »

blueboo wrote: post #46
glitchc wrote: post #29

The problem is really one of supply and demand. Whatever SV talking heads say is a post-hoc rationalization on top of this basic fact. We have too many PhDs (I say this as one). It's never been easier to get one. Most PhD topics are incremental and derivative whereas they should be seminal and ground-breaking. Unfortunately, with credential inflation, this cycle will escalate. Soon people will complete two just to qu…

In a master’s, you learn a lot about a little In a PhD, you learn everything about nothing

Poor comment. Is it true on hackernews you get people who learned nothing about anything?

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

#80

Post by gruez »

tpm wrote: post #76
impostervt wrote: post #64

Honest question, not really related to the story: What makes someone "exploited"? Most of us trade our time for money, so at what point does the money become too little and be considered exploitative? Are all gig workers exploited? Didn't they make a rational choice that this is the best opportunity for themselves? It certainly feels wrong, the low wages. I'm just wondering where the threshold is.

> What makes someone "exploited"? According to Marx it's basically always you are selling your time/labor for money because you are paid less than the value of the labor. The employer keeps the surplus.

It's probably worth mentioning that Marx's labor theory of value is not taken seriously by mainstream economists.
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