Doing the hard work of mapping out the complex ways workers (labor) and corporate entities (capital) interact across national boundaries should be applauded, especially given the historical context that such relationships are highly exploitative.
> People don't even know about their fellow co-workers.
This is very important. To isolate workers to make them powerless gives even more power to companies that are already very powerful.
It also makes to work in this industries more isolating and will cause more mental health issues. This should be illegal, and probably is, and should be investigated and punished by goverments.
surprised that this map does not include the largest 3-5 platforms
Most data annotation comes from educated Western countries atp (the $2 meme is kind of old now since the industry has moved onto RL envs) where the annotators routinely earn multiple times the local median wage.
There's a certain elitist mindset that thinks all real value is in hard labour like farming, construction and white collar work is shown to be fake and exploitative.
> To filter out disturbing images or posts, or to keep chatbots from creating such content, AI systems have to be able to recognize it. That means that data workers must view horrifying images or text passages to label that content
This kind of work is definitely preferable to poverty, or even preferable to toiling in the farms. Its a decent job and some one has to do it and I'm glad someone who needs the money is doing it. I think it is misleading to portray this kind of job as uniquely harmful or stressful.
We consider psychological stress in a different category than physical. I believe the world sees it as more cruel because it corrupts intangible things like one's identity and humanity, not knees and joints. We get physically laborious jobs. They're grueling but we understand the inputs, outputs and the toll.
Putting someone in front of the worst of humanity (CSAM, murder, suicide, bestiality etc) for 9 hours a day at $2/hr seems cruel because it may very well change who they are and how they think. Add to that the fact that it's sponsored by the richest companies on the planet for the benefit of the upper half and you get the current, IMO justified, criticisms.
someone has to do it but it's not a decent job. Content tagging and content moderation are basically the "ditch digging" of the white collar world and often comes with significant toll on those exposed to such content continuously.
People in white shirts can't sit in air-conditioned rooms and program computers if other people aren't out there growing and harvesting and shipping food.
I think if a certain HN crowd doesn’t like the phrasing of “AI colonialism,” just substitute in “capitalism” and maybe it’ll sit better with your personal opinion (for better or worse).
Providing relatively good paying jobs that people can do while sitting in an air conditioned room is hardly colonialism and it cheapens the word when we call it that. This isn't in the same universe as being forced to work to death in a sugarcane field or a gold mine.
> Providing relatively good paying jobs that people can do while sitting in an air conditioned room is hardly colonialism
Their local environments are being destroyed, city and state governance corrupted, regular jobs muscled out, electricity used exorbitantly, psyches damaged, and so much more all in the name of extracting low-cost labor from the less privileged — and thus readily exploited — halfway across the globe, but sure, definitely not colonialism.
Colonialism doesn't mean you make people do back-breaking manual labor; it means you exploit people far away to extract capital from where they are so people nearby can enjoy the fruits of others without having to do the work themselves.
> Providing relatively good paying jobs that people can do while sitting in an air conditioned room is hardly colonialism and it cheapens the word when we call it that.
Definition: Colonialism is the practice by which a state or power extends and maintains political, social, economic, and cultural domination over a foreign territory and its people.
So yes, at scale, a rich country (political domination) employing people en masse in the developing world (economic domination), in this case showing them a slideshow of all the objectionable content westerners share, is colonialism.
The fact that it even exists as an option to simply "export" undesirable tasks to people overseas that you don't see and don't care about is itself an extension of and the maintenance of colonialism.
The second time I read the output I pay for, some of the words are modified to say the opposite. Is there a map of the hidden global labor powering that?
Everybody who works for money is exploited. Not if theyre exploited, but how much.
And yeah, humans are being bought per hour to do AI training. Ok. Are they at least paid decently? Of course not! The surplus (work's worth - wages) is always captured by the Capitalist class.
Do they have to look at horrible content? Yeah. Part of the job and the danger when dealing with use-uploaded content. Is the problem just the horrible content, or is it about pay?
Also, this is regarding US AI companies according to the map. How are the Chinese doing their LLM training? Internally? Global South as well? Wherever they're doing it, is their pay better? Cause this map doesnt have anything regarding China... Or the EU either.
I'm not being exploited any more than I'm exploiting my employer, that's a toxic way to look at voluntary interactions of people doing their best to escape suffering and death.
It's interesting that in Europe the customer and the labor appear to be relatively colocated. Any theories as to why?
Doing the hard work of mapping out the complex ways workers (labor) and corporate entities (capital) interact across national boundaries should be applauded, especially given the historical context that such relationships are highly exploitative.
> People don't even know about their fellow co-workers.
This is very important. To isolate workers to make them powerless gives even more power to companies that are already very powerful.
It also makes to work in this industries more isolating and will cause more mental health issues. This should be illegal, and probably is, and should be investigated and punished by goverments.
surprised that this map does not include the largest 3-5 platforms
Most data annotation comes from educated Western countries atp (the $2 meme is kind of old now since the industry has moved onto RL envs) where the annotators routinely earn multiple times the local median wage.
There's a certain elitist mindset that thinks all real value is in hard labour like farming, construction and white collar work is shown to be fake and exploitative.
> To filter out disturbing images or posts, or to keep chatbots from creating such content, AI systems have to be able to recognize it. That means that data workers must view horrifying images or text passages to label that content
This kind of work is definitely preferable to poverty, or even preferable to toiling in the farms. Its a decent job and some one has to do it and I'm glad someone who needs the money is doing it. I think it is misleading to portray this kind of job as uniquely harmful or stressful.
We consider psychological stress in a different category than physical. I believe the world sees it as more cruel because it corrupts intangible things like one's identity and humanity, not knees and joints. We get physically laborious jobs. They're grueling but we understand the inputs, outputs and the toll.
Putting someone in front of the worst of humanity (CSAM, murder, suicide, bestiality etc) for 9 hours a day at $2/hr seems cruel because it may very well change who they are and how they think. Add to that the fact that it's sponsored by the richest companies on the planet for the benefit of the upper half and you get the current, IMO justified, criticisms.
> Its a decent job and some one has to do it
someone has to do it but it's not a decent job. Content tagging and content moderation are basically the "ditch digging" of the white collar world and often comes with significant toll on those exposed to such content continuously.
People in white shirts can't sit in air-conditioned rooms and program computers if other people aren't out there growing and harvesting and shipping food.
Spoken like someone who's never had to do it.
I think if a certain HN crowd doesn’t like the phrasing of “AI colonialism,” just substitute in “capitalism” and maybe it’ll sit better with your personal opinion (for better or worse).
Providing relatively good paying jobs that people can do while sitting in an air conditioned room is hardly colonialism and it cheapens the word when we call it that. This isn't in the same universe as being forced to work to death in a sugarcane field or a gold mine.
> Providing relatively good paying jobs that people can do while sitting in an air conditioned room is hardly colonialism
Their local environments are being destroyed, city and state governance corrupted, regular jobs muscled out, electricity used exorbitantly, psyches damaged, and so much more all in the name of extracting low-cost labor from the less privileged — and thus readily exploited — halfway across the globe, but sure, definitely not colonialism.
Colonialism doesn't mean you make people do back-breaking manual labor; it means you exploit people far away to extract capital from where they are so people nearby can enjoy the fruits of others without having to do the work themselves.
> Providing relatively good paying jobs that people can do while sitting in an air conditioned room is hardly colonialism and it cheapens the word when we call it that.
Definition: Colonialism is the practice by which a state or power extends and maintains political, social, economic, and cultural domination over a foreign territory and its people.
So yes, at scale, a rich country (political domination) employing people en masse in the developing world (economic domination), in this case showing them a slideshow of all the objectionable content westerners share, is colonialism.
The fact that it even exists as an option to simply "export" undesirable tasks to people overseas that you don't see and don't care about is itself an extension of and the maintenance of colonialism.
It's hardly just a "certain HN crowd" idea. This is genuinely one of those technologies that might bring about the return of colonialism and empires. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/empires-artificial-inte...
It's so interesting that the underlying mechanisms never really change, just the trimmings and how they're dressed up.
The second time I read the output I pay for, some of the words are modified to say the opposite. Is there a map of the hidden global labor powering that?
oh, Brown is a university...
Everybody who works for money is exploited. Not if theyre exploited, but how much.
And yeah, humans are being bought per hour to do AI training. Ok. Are they at least paid decently? Of course not! The surplus (work's worth - wages) is always captured by the Capitalist class.
Do they have to look at horrible content? Yeah. Part of the job and the danger when dealing with use-uploaded content. Is the problem just the horrible content, or is it about pay?
Also, this is regarding US AI companies according to the map. How are the Chinese doing their LLM training? Internally? Global South as well? Wherever they're doing it, is their pay better? Cause this map doesnt have anything regarding China... Or the EU either.
I'm not being exploited any more than I'm exploiting my employer, that's a toxic way to look at voluntary interactions of people doing their best to escape suffering and death.
I saw "AI colonialism", looked at her LinkedIn and yeah she is an activist so all objectivity is out the door.
And you are an inactivist, doing nothing all day?