Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 111 posts

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

#81

Post by zeroonetwothree »

petre wrote: post #9
sokoloff wrote: 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…

Is there an Uber for lawn mowing?

I recall a startup doing this a few years ago but I think they went out of business.

I think the issue is lawn mowing is usually done on a set schedule for a long time so the transaction cost is fairly low and you don’t want to pay a third party to handle the matching problem.

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

#82

Post by jinbachman »

Very impressive.

So Satya Nadella shoves Recall in Windows so that it takes screenshots every few seconds. Satya then sits there scratching his head wondering what to do with all these crap pictures his highly innovative product has captured.

Uber is silently watching and is highly impressed by Satya's innovation and decides to pay its large fleet of employees (sorry, no, they aren't employees) to label these pictures. Having nothing better to do, they start labelling these pictures as hot dog or not hot dog.

Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg is outdoors surfing and hunting but doesn't want to be left out from these once in a lifetime innovations. Mark, a very smart individual, has already foreseen where all this innovation is headed. He rushes home and gets busy and throws around money to buy people who can use these labelled pictures to build him a "AI" bot which can tell him how to make korean sauce.

Very impressive bunch of highly intelligent individuals bringing us billions worth of artificial intelligence revolution. Marvellous.

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

#83

Post by aranelsurion »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #32
constantcrying wrote: post #4

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…

Someone should write a "Gig Striker" app (or web site) for mobile phones. When you sign on you select the company you work for and have access to group chats, forums (by region?). If a thread gets going on striking, the word can be put out on the app and all Uber drivers, just to pick an arbitrary example, refuse to accept calls for one day (again, as an example). It would be an interesting experiment and tell us a l…

That sounds like a union plus mobile app and minus legal protections, or am I getting the idea wrong?

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

#84

Post by computerthings »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #25
berkes wrote: 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…

[dead]

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

#85

Post by computerthings »

sokoloff wrote: post #6
constantcrying wrote: post #4

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…

[dead]

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

#86

Post by ryandrake »

jinbachman wrote: post #82

Very impressive. So Satya Nadella shoves Recall in Windows so that it takes screenshots every few seconds. Satya then sits there scratching his head wondering what to do with all these crap pictures his highly innovative product has captured. Uber is silently watching and is highly impressed by Satya's innovation and decides to pay its large fleet of employees (sorry, no, they aren't employees) to label these picture…

I've always wondered what the world would look like if these huge powerful corporations were run by average people instead of multi-billionaires completely out of touch with what it's like to live in the world. Like have a lottery where everyone gets a single ticket, and the person whose name is drawn gets to be the CEO of Apple for a year, and the 10 next-drawn tickets get to be the senior staff.

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

#87

Post by ryandrake »

abuani wrote: post #76
oefrha wrote: post #34

Here’s a few bucks for helping us eliminate your jobs, isn’t that awesome? That said I shouldn’t laugh, I get at least weekly offers in my mailbox to make up to $50/hr or something to help train models to replace programmers…

I had a recruiter reach out for a company doing Agentic SRE's due to my years of experience as an SRE. Second sentence was describing their mission as making the SRE role no longer necessary for companies. I know if you read between the lines that's the goal of many AI companies, but I was surprised how upfront they were.

There's no reason to hide it anymore. A CEO can go on CNBC and openly admit "Yes, we are excited about AI because if it works we won't have to pay so many middle class white collar workers anymore" and there are many average people who will ideologically defend it, as if they'll somehow be immune.

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

#88

Post by ryandrake »

wiseowise wrote: post #53
skeeter2020 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you need to get past the literal examples to the concept that they are saying "I wanted AI to free me from the mundane, not imprison me with it". This has long been the promise from the same people who now appear to be quite happy to turn us into the Matrix-style feedstock for AI (again, not literal - but maybe literally?). Natural extrapolation: they may be the last to go, but it won't need them either. How…

> How can so many smart people all be Wile E. Coyote? Money. A whole lot of money. They won't live in the dystopian reality of most people in the near future, they'll buy their way out and live their comfortable lives.

That explains the ultra-wealthy, who likely will be able to buy their way out and live their comfortable lives.

But how do you explain the non-elites who are cheering on this dystopian reality? Some of them here in the HN comment section? If this thing that you are cheering for comes true, you'll be just as out of work and underclass as everyone else!

Do people really think the measly $2M 401(k) they got from their tech job is enough to buy them a ticket to the Elysium space station?

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

#89

Post by bdangubic »

abuani wrote: post #76
oefrha wrote: post #34

Here’s a few bucks for helping us eliminate your jobs, isn’t that awesome? That said I shouldn’t laugh, I get at least weekly offers in my mailbox to make up to $50/hr or something to help train models to replace programmers…

I had a recruiter reach out for a company doing Agentic SRE's due to my years of experience as an SRE. Second sentence was describing their mission as making the SRE role no longer necessary for companies. I know if you read between the lines that's the goal of many AI companies, but I was surprised how upfront they were.

state of the industry - you don’t want to be the one being replaced, you want to be the one doing the replacing work :)

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

#90

Post by abuani »

bdangubic wrote: post #89
abuani wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a recruiter reach out for a company doing Agentic SRE's due to my years of experience as an SRE. Second sentence was describing their mission as making the SRE role no longer necessary for companies. I know if you read between the lines that's the goal of many AI companies, but I was surprised how upfront they were.

state of the industry - you don’t want to be the one being replaced, you want to be the one doing the replacing work :)

And that attitude is exactly why humanities is a subject every computer science student should take.
Post reply on HN