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I once saw a business co-Founder joining a startup from Google, around a decade back. Leaving his 500k Googler salary to be a Founder at a hot startup. He was f

I once saw a business co-Founder joining a startup from Google, around a decade back. Leaving his 500k Googler salary to be a Founder at a hot startup. He was from Indian origins and an Ivy League MBA. His first contribution, besides joining with his credentials was to cut down a few cents per hour from what we’ve been paying to a sweatshop some place in India. That was annotating images for us. From somewhat strange biases in the annotated data, it was likely that this sweatshop was employing children. Incidentally, Google had acquihired that startup.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
IIAOPSW 4y ago
[flagged]
- Entinel 4y ago
  Explain how this is "arguably better than school"
  - lovich 4y ago
    Well, if you already value these people at pennys per hour, he probably doesn’t see the value in educating them.
  - IIAOPSW 4y ago
    Do you remember grade school at all. Endless busy work. Teacher hands out a worksheet, any worksheet, just an endless stream of pointless word searches, fill in the blanks, answer these instances of x+y=_ , color by number, write a paragraph in this box, draw hands on this clock etc. Let's be real, below around 8th grade school is mostly socialized babysitting, and these worksheets are in large part there so teacher can keep you all preoccupied with literally anything. Its all equally tedious and just as pointless as say, adding captions to stock photos or pointing out all the traffic lights in an image. The difference is one of them pays and the other doesn't.
    - Entinel 4y ago
      Sounds like you had a poor education. I remember grade school pretty well actually. I remember getting my first taste of programming and I remember having a really great science teacher that passed their love of science onto me which a decade or so later would send me down my career path. There is definitely a good amount of busywork but to claim working in a sweatshop is better than school is nonsense. The difference is one, in principle anyway, sets you up for upward mobility while the other doesn't.
      - IIAOPSW 4y ago
        Which would be true if we were talking about a sweatshop, but it really stretches the definition of "sweatshop" to include desk jobs like annotating images. Which brings me back to the first part that I asked which everyone has ignored. In what meaningful way is annotation work a "sweatshop"
- CatWChainsaw 4y ago
  Am I going to get flagged for pointing out what sort of horrible images need to be "annotated"? Actual terrorist material - beheadings and the like. Actual CSAM. Street violence like Tyre Nichols. Poring over images like that for hours at a time teaching a machine about all the horrors of what people are capable of is supposed to be "better than school"? What a twisted idea.
  - IIAOPSW 4y ago
    Now your adding something that wasn't ever said or implied about the content being sent over for annotation. Do you actually know this is the type of content these annotators would likely see, or are you assuming the worst case you can imagine? How do you know it not merely the tedious busy work of putting captions on Getty Images? Boring for sure, but no worse than the time waster worksheets they'd be filling out in 2nd grade. You're making a fairly extreme leap just from the word "annotator". Can you justify it?
    - CatWChainsaw 4y ago
      There is historical precedent with Facebook employing armies of people to review reported content. Sometimes it is somebody abusing the report button because someone said something they didn't like; other times it is child rape. "[The content reviewer] appealed to her manager to see a counselor to help cope after reviewing a disturbing post, footage of a teenage girl being raped by a group of men in the middle of a field with tall grass. The manager did not have an answer, she said. About a week later, she told her there was a counselor available for her talk to, once a quarter." https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/12/facebook-content-moderator-ptsd/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/12/faceboo... There was even a news story posted here recently about how workers in Nigeria were being paid $2/day to make ChatGPT not a dumpster fire. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34426421 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34426421 So no, it's not a leap of imagination to assume that underpaid and traumatized human labor is used to improve AI, considering that's what it's always been. Honestly, if you work in tech you should know how the sausage is made. After the last six years of the "just asking questions" feigning-ignorance ploy, I'm over it and all who use it.
Waterluvian 4y ago
“Ivy League MBA.” Do other countries label a caste of “prestigious” universities like the U.S. does?
- pvg 4y ago
  'Oxbridge'. Most countries just aren't as big and/or don't have as many prestige branded universities. Many have a one or two that serve similar signaling purposes.
  - Waterluvian 4y ago
    Thanks. I had never heard of this. That gives me plenty to google.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    It's also just there's no convenient portmanteau. Prarvale?
- morelisp 4y ago
  The USA elite wish they had something as conveniently entrenched as Oxbridge.
- 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 4y ago
  Yes, we do too in the UK, the Russell Group [1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Group
DoctorNick 4y ago
"Three years in jail is a good corrective for three years at Harvard" - Alger Hiss

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

IIAOPSW 4y ago

[flagged]

Entinel 4y ago
Explain how this is "arguably better than school"
- lovich 4y ago
  Well, if you already value these people at pennys per hour, he probably doesn’t see the value in educating them.
- IIAOPSW 4y ago
  Do you remember grade school at all. Endless busy work. Teacher hands out a worksheet, any worksheet, just an endless stream of pointless word searches, fill in the blanks, answer these instances of x+y=_ , color by number, write a paragraph in this box, draw hands on this clock etc. Let's be real, below around 8th grade school is mostly socialized babysitting, and these worksheets are in large part there so teacher can keep you all preoccupied with literally anything. Its all equally tedious and just as pointless as say, adding captions to stock photos or pointing out all the traffic lights in an image. The difference is one of them pays and the other doesn't.
  - Entinel 4y ago
    Sounds like you had a poor education. I remember grade school pretty well actually. I remember getting my first taste of programming and I remember having a really great science teacher that passed their love of science onto me which a decade or so later would send me down my career path. There is definitely a good amount of busywork but to claim working in a sweatshop is better than school is nonsense. The difference is one, in principle anyway, sets you up for upward mobility while the other doesn't.
    - IIAOPSW 4y ago
      Which would be true if we were talking about a sweatshop, but it really stretches the definition of "sweatshop" to include desk jobs like annotating images. Which brings me back to the first part that I asked which everyone has ignored. In what meaningful way is annotation work a "sweatshop"
CatWChainsaw 4y ago
Am I going to get flagged for pointing out what sort of horrible images need to be "annotated"? Actual terrorist material - beheadings and the like. Actual CSAM. Street violence like Tyre Nichols. Poring over images like that for hours at a time teaching a machine about all the horrors of what people are capable of is supposed to be "better than school"? What a twisted idea.
- IIAOPSW 4y ago
  Now your adding something that wasn't ever said or implied about the content being sent over for annotation. Do you actually know this is the type of content these annotators would likely see, or are you assuming the worst case you can imagine? How do you know it not merely the tedious busy work of putting captions on Getty Images? Boring for sure, but no worse than the time waster worksheets they'd be filling out in 2nd grade. You're making a fairly extreme leap just from the word "annotator". Can you justify it?
  - CatWChainsaw 4y ago
    There is historical precedent with Facebook employing armies of people to review reported content. Sometimes it is somebody abusing the report button because someone said something they didn't like; other times it is child rape. "[The content reviewer] appealed to her manager to see a counselor to help cope after reviewing a disturbing post, footage of a teenage girl being raped by a group of men in the middle of a field with tall grass. The manager did not have an answer, she said. About a week later, she told her there was a counselor available for her talk to, once a quarter." https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/12/facebook-content-moderator-ptsd/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/12/faceboo... There was even a news story posted here recently about how workers in Nigeria were being paid $2/day to make ChatGPT not a dumpster fire. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34426421 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34426421 So no, it's not a leap of imagination to assume that underpaid and traumatized human labor is used to improve AI, considering that's what it's always been. Honestly, if you work in tech you should know how the sausage is made. After the last six years of the "just asking questions" feigning-ignorance ploy, I'm over it and all who use it.

Waterluvian 4y ago

“Ivy League MBA.” Do other countries label a caste of “prestigious” universities like the U.S. does?

pvg 4y ago
'Oxbridge'. Most countries just aren't as big and/or don't have as many prestige branded universities. Many have a one or two that serve similar signaling purposes.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  Thanks. I had never heard of this. That gives me plenty to google.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  It's also just there's no convenient portmanteau. Prarvale?
morelisp 4y ago
The USA elite wish they had something as conveniently entrenched as Oxbridge.
6LLvveMx2koXfwn 4y ago
Yes, we do too in the UK, the Russell Group [1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Group

DoctorNick 4y ago

"Three years in jail is a good corrective for three years at Harvard" - Alger Hiss