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Crowdsource by Google
- prepend 4y agoI guess mechanical Turk was too expensive for Google. I’m all for collaborative, open source projects but it seems kind of skeevy for a company as profitable as Google to basically set up free labor for themselves. I hope there are some fun 4chan stories of people breaking classification.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- arc-in-space 4y agoWow, did they intentionally try to make the most loathsome thing possible?
- unboxingelf 4y agoYou truly are the product. Don’t feed the FAANG.
- trapped 4y agoNone of the FAANG companies are cartel or forcing any users to use their products at gun point. Don't like their products then don't use it. Use alternative. They built one of the best products hence most of the world is using it.
- popcorncowboy 4y agoThis has gotta be trolling, but in case not. Your comments are demonstrably disingenuous. You can't really opt-out. Employers, friends, family, partners, colleagues, peers, etc all rely on you relying on the FAANG/MAAMA networks and network-effect one way or another whether we want to or not. These companies provide what have become public utility services that large parts of society now depends upon. "Best products"? (this was the troll right? ;) More like "only products", with positions that were achieved in no small part through anti-competitive, anti-consumer behaviours that have run almost unchecked for the better part of two decades. So what alternative are you talking about? Opting out? That's only an option in the same way that you can theoretically "opt out of society" and go and live in a cave for a year or two before you die of malnutrition/illness/etc. It's a capitulation to the embedded powers-that-be to imply this theoretical qualifies as practical alternative.
- rejn 4y agoMan, you are all over this defending the behemoths. Can I see your GOGL tattoo??
- usr1106 4y agoNot true. In many European cities you cannot rent a bike without being a customer of either Apple or being the product of Google. Even buying public transport tickets gets hard without the app, which of course is not on F-Droid. Often you pay more on other channels.
- mikro2nd 4y agoAu contraire! DO feed the GRAFT - misinformation, noise, wrong answers only. PS. The 1960's called and wanted their slogan back: "Fight the computer, fold your punch-cards."
- dqpb 4y ago> Find Your Passion: Spotting food or animals in photos… > Get Recognized: earn cool badges, level up on the leaderboards…
- strix_varius 4y agoIs this essentially mechanical Turk, but without paying the laborers?
- BbzzbB 4y agoSeems like, with a better name tho. But you get fun out of it! And you make a difference (in Alphabet's bottom line).
- karmakaze 4y ago..or "Crowdsource for Google"
- mateo1 4y agoNot really, you can't get child labor on MTurk (officially). But hey, you get badges, and you help the community by providing them training data they'll lock up in a server and use to monopolize more sectors of the economy. Everyone wins when google can do better sentiment analysis on your non-english emails.
- bastawhiz 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bryans 4y agoYour aggressive tone is completely inappropriate, especially considering that you are mostly wrong. They have released a single dataset, and specifically state on the site that only some of the data will be open sourced. So, perhaps it is you who should be reading further. "Google shares some Crowdsource data via open-sourcing, for the benefit of the global research and developer communities. This includes the 400,000 images that we've already released as Open Images Extended, with more sharing to come." https://crowdsource.google.com/about/how-it-works/ https://crowdsource.google.com/about/how-it-works/
- userbinator 4y agoBecause calling it "free labour" just wouldn't attract quite as many people... Perhaps ~2 decades ago I would've been a bit more optimistic, but now that I'm aware of the authoritarian dystopia which Google and the rest of Big Tech are trying to drive society towards, I feel obliged to point out that helping it achieve that goal is a really bad idea.
- winternett 4y agoFree labor is all that is being pedaled in most of these projects... It really worries me about our future as a planet. It's crazy how many people jump on doing surveys for free , and even in creating content for social platforms daily for free, because it's promoted by billion dollar profit companies that could easily hire and pay people while still making good profit. The free labor economy is insanely out of control now, and accurate truths about the exploitation and data mining never will be discussed because these companies can easily suppress and downvote them. I don't do any surveys, haven't since before the Cambridge Analytica story.
- abecedarian007 4y ago*peddled
- totetsu 4y agoI gave away quite a bit of free labor to Google and niantic as they were launching ingress. If I had known that pokemon go would eventually be a thing, I might have thought a bit more about the power I had to shape where people would be walking every day for the next 10 years.
- gerash 4y agoI don't know what you are ranting about but the term "crowdsourcing" is exactly what this tool is created to do. Don't use it if you don't want to.
- LittleShaman 4y agoIt's still funny a company awash in money wouldn't just hire people to do this. And I'm quite sure people criticizing this won't be using it :)
- nine_k 4y agoNow let's imagine it's fun enough so that people don't see it as free labor, but see it as genuine entertainment, like, say, Wordle. How would they weed out bad-faith players who would try to teach the AI bad ideas, just for, well, fun of it? I don't believe they might fail to anticipate that; I want to understand their approach.
- alexjurkiewicz 4y agoIf you ask enough people the same question, it's easy to identify and drop outlier answers.
- userbinator 4y agoThat depends how political the question is.
- scarface74 4y agoSo this helps improve Google’s proprietary products. But they aren’t willing to open source the data set?
- nr2x 4y agoI’m sure they’d generate more, and better, data if they committed to open source.
- skybrian 4y agoAccording to this page, they have already open sourced some datasets: https://crowdsource.google.com/about/open-source/ https://crowdsource.google.com/about/open-source/
- scarface74 4y agoBut they say nothing about it in the linked announcement. > Help Google create AI that understands your language and culture. Make your favorite apps and services even more useful and delightful for your community.
- jackblemming 4y agoDoes anyone else hate what corporations have done to the word "delightful"? All the corporate art is so homogeneous too. Also a trillion dollar plus market cap company trying to get free labor? Seriously?
- trapped 4y agoIt's giving free services. What about that? And, not just this one company many other trillion $$ market caps give free and paid services and also welcome free feedback. When you comment on Yelp, Google Maps review, YouTube it's same.
- SkyMarshal 4y ago> Does anyone else hate what corporations have done to the word "delightful"? Yes, and also to the word "exciting", the most overused word in the history of all human language.
- drekipus 4y agoThis is kinda funny. > "Connect with others around the world" The only connecting I'd want to do is with Chinese people to practise my Chinese. Inwhich my horribly broken Chinese would be a detriment to the algorithm.
- rschachte 4y ago
- tjpnz 4y agoIt isn't slavery when there's people willing to do free work for Google (as perverse as it may sound). Just look at their product forums.
- trapped 4y agoResponding to parent comment: People want free stuff and then complain if some entity asks help. How's seeking unpaid help digital slavery? You must be very charitable person. And FYI here are some definitions from dictionary, in case you meant something else by "digital slavery" slavery : the state of being a slave. slave : a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them.
- jeswin 4y agoScammy how they're spinning it with language used by non-profits/charity: "Learn why your help matters".
- needle0 4y agoSo if Google services behave in a tone-deaf way regarding the culture and languages of non-western countries, now it's the fault of us the foreigners for not contributing enough to the AI?
- mrtweetyhack 4y ago
- j_barbossa 4y agoCrowdsource by Google aka "Help a billion dollar company to create datasets for free"
- mhh__ 4y agoMake that a trillion
- visarga 4y agoWe are already providing search clicks and video likes as indicators of content quality. They train AIs on our preferences.
- krono 4y agoIt's not working so well though, in my experience anyway
- samatman 4y agoRare sighting of the long scale in the (English speaking) wild!
- learndeeply 4y agoI was expecting to be pessimistic, but Google actually releases the datasets under a permissive license (CC-By 4.0). Awesome! https://research.google/tools/datasets/open-images-extended-crowdsourced/ https://research.google/tools/datasets/open-images-extended-... https://github.com/google-research-datasets/hiertext https://github.com/google-research-datasets/hiertext
- j_barbossa 4y agoThat blog post doesn't state that _all_ collected data through Crowdsource will get published.
- bastawhiz 4y agoDo you really want raw, unmoderated user generated content?
- cute_boi 4y agoYes! They can provide both filtered & unfiltered data.
- Rebelgecko 4y agoI imagine there would be some serious legal concerns with releasing the raw data (I work for Google, but no special insights into this project)
- IshKebab 4y agoWhy? Users volunteer the data. Just ask them if they're ok with it being public.
- thinkingemote 4y agoOne negative, I guess, would be uncovering the moderation algorithm so a malicious user could circumvent it. Another negative would be release of Bad Words or illegal content submitted by malicious users. Depends on the task. But the actual raw data would be of more use to researchers than one cleaned from an output of algorithms. Perhaps there could be a program for educational researchers?
- bprasanna 4y agoThey should avoid using the word community, if side product of these contributions are going to empower their sales. I had been contributing to Google Maps for more than 8 years now, but in return all i get is stars and maximum an invite to a meetup. But, when i saw the other side of Google Maps with respect to consuming it through API usage point of view, the prices are not affordable in long term. Also, there is a clear monopolization of maps data, but the data is enriched by human volunteers who never get the share of API revenue. In this age of web3 all these crowdsourcing and community keywords from companies like Google will earn more backlash than a warm welcome.
- HideousKojima 4y agoYou should put your efforts into open street map instead
- bprasanna 4y agoYes, im looking for an alternative app for StreetComplete, which is not available in App Store.
- colordrops 4y agoI'm curious why you'd put so much free effort into a paid-for product by a trillion dollar company.
- bprasanna 4y agoTo be honest, until i saw the API side of Google Maps i was under the assumption that Google is doing great service with Google Maps. Even now Google Maps gives the accurate result thanks to all the contributors.
- LunaSea 4y agoBut the Google Maps API isn't free so I don't think your point applies here.
- visarga 4y agoMaybe they are after more diverse answers than could be provided by their own employees. Meaning they don't hire diverse enough.
- Animats 4y ago"People like you helping people like us help ourselves."
- cute_boi 4y agoBasically, "How to make people to work for free 101." What is the value of those badges?
- nathanganser 4y agoThey could at least give out some NFTs :)
- midenginedcoupe 4y agoSo many comments bemoaning a company benefiting from the free labour of others. Wait until they hear about open source software, they'll do their nut!
- midenginedcoupe 4y agoCurious as to why this is getting downvoted? It's literally how the economics of open source software works. Vanishingly few companies put back anything like the value they extract from the open source ecosystem and many, many projects are funded overwhelmingly by the free labour and effort of their committers.
- trasz 4y agoWith Open Source everyone can benefit, including a company. In this case here only Google benefits.
- asim 4y agoI was always a huge fan of Google from the late 90s onwards and was employed their from 2011 to 2013. I continue to use their services to this day. Unfortunately no matter how much you like something, when any one entity amasses this much power it's bound to make you a bit uncomfortable. I wish Google did more to anonymize and potentially distribute this kind of tech in a way that enabled anyone to run it. At the scale that Google is it's really hard to trust them with more and more personal data considering the employees could be quite literally anyone with any personal agenda that does not serve the greater good. They have no way of vetting employees to that degree and that's the biggest issue. I'm not just handing my data over to a machine or some homogeneous blob. I'm handing it to people I don't even know. Ultimately crowdsource leads to UBI powered by Google. It's inevitable. But one entity controlling our lives is very hard to accept even if it is Google.
- cmrdporcupine 4y agoI agree with many of your points, but re: employees frankly internal systems at Google are pretty heavily audited and locked down not just in regards to PII but in regards to any queries against e.g. log data that try to narrow data down to small result sets. I can't speak to these ML data sets, but I was at Google 2011-2021 and in my time I believe I applied for and got log data access twice and the restrictions were serious, and the whole thing is heavily audited.
- asim 4y agoThat might be true and I believe you but that doesn't change the fact that I'm more and more deeply uncomfortable handing over more and more personal data to a single large entity who basically knows as much about my life as I do. The single rogue employee might not be able to do much but inevitably all these companies suffer leaks, hacks and whatever else. Google is not immune to this. Machine learning is also a black box as much as anyone will tell you they understand it they really don't. So the potential for mishaps there are high. Again I do believe Google is the best technology company on earth, I continue to use their products, but I'm also more and more in deep contemplation on how to build viable alternatives to a lot of the products I use. I'll never be able to build things at their scale or even at the caliber of their UX but maybe there's a better alternatives as we go into ambient computing.
- commoner 4y agoOne of the tasks in this app is audio validation: > Audio validation: Listen to a short audio clip and determine if the pronunciation sounds natural in your language. If this is something you're interested in doing, I recommend contributing to Mozilla's Common Voice instead. Common Voice builds freely licensed (CC-0) voice datasets that can be used by anyone, not just Google: https://commonvoice.mozilla.org https://commonvoice.mozilla.org
- charcircuit 4y ago
- polygamous_bat 4y agoBecause most people have finite time and energy.
- LittleShaman 4y agoProbably because while some data has been open-sourced, there isn't any statement on what other data be open-sourced, or a comittment to it by Google. Voice data hasn't been open-sourced. Mozilla on the other hand is a non-profit which will release the result of your labor under a very permissible license.
- throwoutway 4y agoFinite time: dedicate it to the freely licensed org, not the company with 30++Billion in profits. They can pay people to do this
- 6510 4y ago>....30++Billion in profits earn badges and level up
- seydor 4y agoWe all need to contribute to save Google from the dangers of nonrecord profits
- speedgoose 4y agoHow much do they pay?
- samoit 4y agoAs far as I see this, Google want us to do the job...for free. No, thank you very much. Payment for this should be mandatory. Do not work for free for a humongous company.
- rwalle 4y agoNot for free! You can get useless badges!
- rimeice 4y agoHandover your most sensitive information and get “cool badges” in return. Sign me up!
- lupire 4y ago> As a member of our global community of contributors, you're helping to create AI that can best serve the rich Ok
- usr1106 4y agoHow naive can people be? Help Google build AI? Google is very profitable business. They should pay whoever works for them. I can do some free work for wikipedia, osm or the like. But not for Google.
- bla3 4y agoThe app was initially released 2016, with the last update half a year ago. Did anything happen to get this posted? If not, maybe add a (2016).
- __alexs 4y agoIs strange that they don't pay contributors for this at all. Google frequently pay me in Play store credit via Google Rewards to answer questions about places I've been and videos I've watched.
- celdon25 4y agoIf Google asked me to help with solving world hunger, I wouldn’t do it. Helped them enough with my data, and my lost faith in humanity when they were complicit in ruining the web.
- khaledh 4y agoAren't they already doing this with reCAPTCHA?
- FernandoMax 4y agoFrom the authors of Google Reader, it-was-free-for-a-decade-but-now-pay-or you'll-lose-all-your-domain.com-emails-handled-by-previously-free-workspace-product, the secret agreement with Facebook for limiting competition in programatic advertising https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/technology/google-facebook-ad-deal-antitrust.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/technology/google-faceboo... now arrives "Work for us for free in our proprietary product in exchange of a badge". What a big load of shit.
- number6 4y agoCould have, at least, be a NFT
- OrangeMonkey 4y agoCould have been yes. Imagine if it was a beanie baby instead man. I think those are going to the moon.
- FernandoMax 4y agoTo add insult to injury, they coined the "Don't be evil" mantra. Good for hiring, for onboarding users... And then the daughter of Eric Smith, from all the companies in the world, she chose Cambridge Analytica for the internship. AKA: the best social profiling algorithms in the world based on personal data (eroding your privacy). https://www.businessinsider.in/Emails-link-Peter-Thiels-Palantir-and-Eric-Schmidts-daughter-to-Facebooks-Cambridge-Analytica-fiasco/articleshow/63510312.cms https://www.businessinsider.in/Emails-link-Peter-Thiels-Pala... Media has too much fear to talk openly about what's happening with Google from some time ago.
- rayrrr 4y agoI suggest pairing this with another front-page HN article from today: https://thehustle.co/why-free-stuff-makes-us-irrational/ https://thehustle.co/why-free-stuff-makes-us-irrational/ and in that article, s/us/Google/g.
- zxienin 4y agoI may be coming too cynical on this. So folks are supposed to add value for google for free. And Google can get away by gamification tricks?
- leaflets2 4y ago"work for us and don't get paid" "But you can look at this image of a medal"
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]