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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

#91

Post by jamwil »

ryandrake wrote: post #86
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.

This is similar to my idea for a better democracy. Every cycle involves a lottery where, say, 1000 random citizens become eligible to run for public office. A small enough number to make ‘career politician/sociopath’ an unviable life path but large enough that there will inevitably be some excellent potential candidates in the pool that wouldn’t have entered politics otherwise.

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

#92

Post by wiseowise »

ryandrake wrote: post #88
wiseowise wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

> 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?

Move to a low cost area and live like a king.

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

#93

Post by wiseowise »

markus_zhang wrote: post #77
wiseowise wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What? I don’t think ordinary people are rising up in China at least.

Would they be able to if they wanted?

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

#95

Post by lotsofpulp »

wiseowise wrote: post #92
ryandrake wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> 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? Move to a low cost area and live like a king.

Not having to live in a low cost area is a defining feature of kings.

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

#96

Post by insane_dreamer »

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…

My journey has been the same as yours.

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

#97

Post by mikkupikku »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #78
mikkupikku wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I can't quite square people seriously believing such things, it seems like it must be wishful thinking crossed with denial. We have more than 200 years of technology taking away the hard and dangerous jobs and it h…

This is pretty wrong. We went from 90% of the population working in agriculture in ~1800 to (now) 80% working in services. Most services jobs are much nicer (and require far less manual labor) than those in agriculture.

Farming sucks, therefore common laborers will profit and live luxurious when technology takes their jobs is a hell of a stretch. And even saying those displaced farm workers who had to migrate to crowded and dirty cities just to continue to survive personally benefited is a stretch too. As a whole we're better off now, but trying to pretend that you're doing somebody a favor by eliminating their job seems like peak techie cope.

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

#98

Post by oefrha »

ryandrake wrote: post #87
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.

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.

Any time you dare to mention AI is going to replace software devs here, loads of people come out of the woodwork saying there’s zero evidence and it’s all just the end of ZIRP or whatever.

Well I know for a fact that my company’s art spending is way down, and while we haven’t fired any software engineer we also haven’t added any. I’m very conservative about the AI hype but I can’t deny a 20%-30% boost at the moment so I’m not gonna hire a junior to do the boring 25% for me, who incidentally would be more annoying to steer the way I want. And it wouldn’t surprise me if a slightly more capable model actually makes us slash headcount or at least never need a junior again, same way artists are going. It’s also likely that solopreneurs won’t need to hire in the first place, or will be able to run very lean teams a lot more easily. Many of us will be replaced sooner or later, no idea when, but burying head in the sand doesn’t help much.

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

#99

Post by FredPret »

Avicebron wrote: post #40
FredPret wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to your very good points: an economy of people who take this live-and-let-live view is going to be far more flexible and efficient in different scenarios. An economy made up of people who think it proper to make entire classes of employment like gig work (or work that pays under a certain minimum wage) illegal is not only interfering in the decisions of adults, but can only prosper under the exact set of…

Your spherical cow version of economics is laughably naive and misguided. If "adults" decided tomorrow that it was fine to employ people at only the infrastructure cost of preventing them running away, people would be outraged. But somehow flooding an ecosystem with money to starve meaningful competition and capitalize on people's inherent lack of options, which is "preventing them from running away with extra steps"…

It’s reality-based, empirical economics, not “mine”.

Place that let adults choose who to work for and who to employ, and furthermore consider it improper to even use the word “let” in this context, universally have better employment situations than places that follow your “spherical cow” theoretical planned / over-regulated economies.

You seem to ascribe agency only to the employers, but remember that every Uber driver and every shitty minimum-wage job holder is almost certainly just doing their best. Making their jobs illegal will not improve their lives one iota, not in theory, and not in practice.

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

#100

Post by andriesm »

jamwil wrote: post #91
ryandrake wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is similar to my idea for a better democracy. Every cycle involves a lottery where, say, 1000 random citizens become eligible to run for public office. A small enough number to make ‘career politician/sociopath’ an unviable life path but large enough that there will inevitably be some excellent potential candidates in the pool that wouldn’t have entered politics otherwise.

What a brilliant idea. Definitely love it for politics. Not for CEO of any share I own!
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