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I can’t believe all the comments arguing that this is good for the Kenyans. Yes, obviously this industry shouldn’t exist. But it does. Lots of industries exist

I can’t believe all the comments arguing that this is good for the Kenyans. Yes, obviously this industry shouldn’t exist. But it does. Lots of industries exist purely to fix inefficiencies in others. If there was other global knowledge work available to Kenyans I’m sure they’d take it. These people are writing college level essays! They are probably better writers than most of us. When futurists talk about industrial revolutions they all agree that in the long term it works out but in the short term it causes lots of pain and suffering for those whose work is displaced. If you’re an AI futurist you should be intellectually honest and admit that chatGPT is probably not going to be good for Kenya. Trying to dress it up as if there’s absolutely no downside to this is just lying to yourself.

antibasilisk 4y ago
technology is always good, and if it's not good it's the users fault, and if it's not the users fault then it's society's fault and if it's not society's fault then you're just backwards and you want to die in a cave from pneumonia
- ghiculescu 4y ago
  I actually do think technology is mostly good, I just don’t like when people pretend it doesn’t come with consequences they don’t like.
  - tiedieconderoga 4y ago
    Technology is neither good nor bad, it is neutral. How new technologies are used, however, depends on the people who reify them. We can apply them in ways that are helpful, harmful, or more often both. It is incumbent on us to figure out how to implement and regulate new tech so that it appeals to the better angels of our nature, rather than encouraging the atavistic Hobbes-ian instincts which successful societies must overcome.
automatic6131 4y ago
Can't you see how bad it for Kenya - or anywhere - for people bright enough to write college level essays to be wasting their time writing them for rich people studying in Western colleges? What you do for a living isn't neutral, there's an opportunity cost. That person in Kenya writing an essay for someone else isn't doing journalism or writing a great novel, or starting a business or whatever. Now, for sure, Kenya isn't the best place for doing those things anyway, but it's never going to be if a whole pool of labor is doing bullshit work like grinding out college-level essays. There's no path from where Kenya is today (not great, not as bad as you might think though) to where the West is where work like that is a part of its economy, is there?
- ghiculescu 4y ago
  You can argue that about anything. Can't you see how bad it for America - or anywhere - for people bright enough to understand stocks to be wasting their time selling stocks to rich people in Western countries Economies are too complex to judge any one person’s choice of how they participate in them. If starting a business (or being a journalist or writing a novel) was a better idea, perhaps some of those Kenyans would have done that. But writing college essay brings (brought?) new money into Kenya that can be reinvested in new businesses, journalists, and novels. In the absence of non-corrupt foreign investment in Kenya I think this could be a big booster for their productive economy. Or maybe not. But who are we to judge?
  - nh23423fefe 4y ago
    I don't see why price discovery in an information market is comparable to essay writing in search of a social credential for someone else?
- mbesto 4y ago
  > for people bright enough to write college level essays to be wasting their time writing them for rich people studying in Western colleges? That's an issue for the American education system, not Kenya's population.
  - 4y ago
peteradio 4y ago
Those Nigerian Princes sure are clever bilking people out of their savings, we should think of the consequences of removing the income of such clever groups. Yes these are people but that way leads to rot lets not normalize it unnecessarily, MHO!!!
- flangola7 4y ago
  The article is not about fraudsters
carlosjobim 4y ago
> If there was other global knowledge work available to Kenyans I’m sure they’d take it. These people are writing college level essays! They are probably better writers than most of us. Shouldn't they be employed at improving their own country, since they are this smart? Instead of gaining from corruption and fraud on another continent? If the smartest young people in your country have to move abroad or work remotely for foreign companies in order to make the most of their skills, then your country and society is a total failure - ask me if you want, I'm from one of those places.
- ta988 4y ago
  So what, gathering capital from dumb kids so they can do things that matter to them is bad?
  - DeusExMachina 4y ago
    > so they can do things that matter to them They can do what matters to them without cheating the system and getting rewarded a degree for it.
    - maerF0x0 4y ago
      However the capitalist system is one in which you should be rewarded for outsourcing something you cannot do or cannot do inexpensively yourself. Organization and correct market theories are what's rewarded* in capitalism. Especially in business schools we should be focused on making people who have those skills and rewarding them for successfully doing it. IMO the real distortion is in overvaluing those who have a degree, many of which only proves they can show up on time, consistently, and do as their told. * (amongst other negative forms like rent seeking etc I'm talking about the positive case here)
  - carlosjobim 4y ago
    It's a lost opportunity and productivity loss. If the Kenyan writer was employed doing something that has a purpose, economic wealth would increase. Instead he/she is employed with helping incompetent people scam their way into jobs and positions where they will damage productivity.
gonehome 4y ago
It’s often this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-debates-should-not-appear-one-sided https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-deb... “ Politics is the mind-killer. Arguments are soldiers. Once you know which side you’re on, you must support all arguments of that side, and attack all arguments that appear to favor the enemy side; otherwise it’s like stabbing your soldiers in the back. If you abide within that pattern, policy debates will also appear one-sided to you—the costs and drawbacks of your favored policy are enemy soldiers, to be attacked by any means necessary.”
spaceman_2020 4y ago
I’m pretty worried about India. Pretty much all of our recent prosperity can be attributed to the tech sector. The bulk of this tech sector is outsourcing work, not high level architecture or design work. I can imagine this entire sector being hollowed out completely within a few years, destroying the entire middle class.
- NineStarPoint 4y ago
  I think too many companies have too much invested in their India teams for it to only take a few years for the sector to wind down. Short of some sort of calamity making it impossible for other counties to keep working with them, I suspect it would be a transition more over decades than years. (Even if AI is a looming issue, the sort of companies large enough to outsource are also the companies that will take the longest to truly realize AIs potential in their own workflows) I’ve also worked with enough extremely skilled people out of India who were involved in architecture and design work that I think all the skill needed is present in the country for their own tech sector to sustain itself eventually. Now if the government and societal norms will allow that to actually come to fruition…less sure on that.
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    The market will force their hand. If your competitor replaces its entire customer service with AI agents that talk like real people with an American accent (the tech is almost there) and reports lower costs and higher profits, you will have no choice but to follow along. India’s tech sector is almost entirely dominated by low paid, low skilled tech labor. TCS and Infosys combined employ over a million people. To give you an indication of the skill gap, a fresh college graduate who joins TCS usually gets $4,500-5,000 per year. Meanwhile a VC funded startup product company will usually pay $30-40,000 per year. I really don’t see how these $5k/year employees aren’t replaced by AI agents.
    - Uw7yTcf36gTc 4y ago
      i haven't seen it posted before, but i've noticed many (if not all) Checker's (Rally's for some) burger restaurants have automated drive-thru order taker. You speak what you want and can upgrade sizes and so on and I've never had it not get my order correct. Newer versions with the ChatGPT-like AI is definitely closer than people think. and Customer Service jobs are a very large amount of employment here and overseas. Bad for lots of people.
meany 4y ago
I am very worried about the potential impacts of AI across all societies. However, I think a reasonable argument can be made that providing all Kenyans access to the knowledge of ChatGPT could accelerate the nations development, rather than just eliminate all options. I’m not saying that is what will happen, but I am not sure AI futurists are lying to themselves. I don’t know how any side in this debate can be sure they are right. In fact, I think the best argument against the AI futurist argument is the wild uncertainty of what will happen and risks associated with that.
maerF0x0 4y ago
I wont go as far as to say its "Good" full stop, but Kenya (and other less developed nations, relative to US) have an opportunity to base their economy on the next thing, rather than incumbents which must unwind policy and allow long term investments to fall to unacceptable ROI (often bankruptcy) ... Consider telephone and credit card networks. Some countries skipped straight to mobile/wireless telephony (with internet!) while the US had to make the "this region already is wired, why are we putting a cell tower there?" (this played out in the 90s). Similar has happened with creditcard terminals in USA, where other countries got better infrastructure faster because there wasnt a competing incumbent investment in place.
g9yuayon 4y ago
> If there was other global knowledge work available to Kenyans I’m sure they’d take it. I'm not sure the logic stands. Following the same logic, I can also argue that of course looting should not exist, but it does. Looter could've taken a decent job if they could find one. Plagiarism shouldn't exist, but it does. The cheating students could've avoid cheating if they could get higher scores so they can find a decent job. And on and on. What's wrong is wrong. Period.
- ghiculescu 4y ago
  Looting is a crime. Writing an essay isn’t. (Maybe it’s not allowed for the college student.)
  - g9yuayon 4y ago
    Writing an essay for someone else is cheating. It's still wrong. Just not as punishable as a crime. BTW, cheating in Keju (Chinese imperial examination) is a capitol crime, as it undermined the fairness of the system and the quality of the ruling class, and derived the chances of other poor candidates. Not that I think cheating is serious, mind you, just wanted to give perspective on how different cultures perceive cheating and the underlying rationales.

antibasilisk 4y ago

technology is always good, and if it's not good it's the users fault, and if it's not the users fault then it's society's fault and if it's not society's fault then you're just backwards and you want to die in a cave from pneumonia

ghiculescu 4y ago
I actually do think technology is mostly good, I just don’t like when people pretend it doesn’t come with consequences they don’t like.
- tiedieconderoga 4y ago
  Technology is neither good nor bad, it is neutral. How new technologies are used, however, depends on the people who reify them. We can apply them in ways that are helpful, harmful, or more often both. It is incumbent on us to figure out how to implement and regulate new tech so that it appeals to the better angels of our nature, rather than encouraging the atavistic Hobbes-ian instincts which successful societies must overcome.

automatic6131 4y ago

Can't you see how bad it for Kenya - or anywhere - for people bright enough to write college level essays to be wasting their time writing them for rich people studying in Western colleges? What you do for a living isn't neutral, there's an opportunity cost. That person in Kenya writing an essay for someone else isn't doing journalism or writing a great novel, or starting a business or whatever. Now, for sure, Kenya isn't the best place for doing those things anyway, but it's never going to be if a whole pool of labor is doing bullshit work like grinding out college-level essays. There's no path from where Kenya is today (not great, not as bad as you might think though) to where the West is where work like that is a part of its economy, is there?

ghiculescu 4y ago
You can argue that about anything. Can't you see how bad it for America - or anywhere - for people bright enough to understand stocks to be wasting their time selling stocks to rich people in Western countries Economies are too complex to judge any one person’s choice of how they participate in them. If starting a business (or being a journalist or writing a novel) was a better idea, perhaps some of those Kenyans would have done that. But writing college essay brings (brought?) new money into Kenya that can be reinvested in new businesses, journalists, and novels. In the absence of non-corrupt foreign investment in Kenya I think this could be a big booster for their productive economy. Or maybe not. But who are we to judge?
- nh23423fefe 4y ago
  I don't see why price discovery in an information market is comparable to essay writing in search of a social credential for someone else?
mbesto 4y ago
> for people bright enough to write college level essays to be wasting their time writing them for rich people studying in Western colleges? That's an issue for the American education system, not Kenya's population.
- 4y ago

peteradio 4y ago

Those Nigerian Princes sure are clever bilking people out of their savings, we should think of the consequences of removing the income of such clever groups. Yes these are people but that way leads to rot lets not normalize it unnecessarily, MHO!!!

flangola7 4y ago
The article is not about fraudsters

carlosjobim 4y ago

> If there was other global knowledge work available to Kenyans I’m sure they’d take it. These people are writing college level essays! They are probably better writers than most of us. Shouldn't they be employed at improving their own country, since they are this smart? Instead of gaining from corruption and fraud on another continent? If the smartest young people in your country have to move abroad or work remotely for foreign companies in order to make the most of their skills, then your country and society is a total failure - ask me if you want, I'm from one of those places.

ta988 4y ago
So what, gathering capital from dumb kids so they can do things that matter to them is bad?
- DeusExMachina 4y ago
  > so they can do things that matter to them They can do what matters to them without cheating the system and getting rewarded a degree for it.
  - maerF0x0 4y ago
    However the capitalist system is one in which you should be rewarded for outsourcing something you cannot do or cannot do inexpensively yourself. Organization and correct market theories are what's rewarded* in capitalism. Especially in business schools we should be focused on making people who have those skills and rewarding them for successfully doing it. IMO the real distortion is in overvaluing those who have a degree, many of which only proves they can show up on time, consistently, and do as their told. * (amongst other negative forms like rent seeking etc I'm talking about the positive case here)
- carlosjobim 4y ago
  It's a lost opportunity and productivity loss. If the Kenyan writer was employed doing something that has a purpose, economic wealth would increase. Instead he/she is employed with helping incompetent people scam their way into jobs and positions where they will damage productivity.

gonehome 4y ago

It’s often this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-debates-should-not-appear-one-sided https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-deb... “ Politics is the mind-killer. Arguments are soldiers. Once you know which side you’re on, you must support all arguments of that side, and attack all arguments that appear to favor the enemy side; otherwise it’s like stabbing your soldiers in the back. If you abide within that pattern, policy debates will also appear one-sided to you—the costs and drawbacks of your favored policy are enemy soldiers, to be attacked by any means necessary.”

spaceman_2020 4y ago

I’m pretty worried about India. Pretty much all of our recent prosperity can be attributed to the tech sector. The bulk of this tech sector is outsourcing work, not high level architecture or design work. I can imagine this entire sector being hollowed out completely within a few years, destroying the entire middle class.

NineStarPoint 4y ago
I think too many companies have too much invested in their India teams for it to only take a few years for the sector to wind down. Short of some sort of calamity making it impossible for other counties to keep working with them, I suspect it would be a transition more over decades than years. (Even if AI is a looming issue, the sort of companies large enough to outsource are also the companies that will take the longest to truly realize AIs potential in their own workflows) I’ve also worked with enough extremely skilled people out of India who were involved in architecture and design work that I think all the skill needed is present in the country for their own tech sector to sustain itself eventually. Now if the government and societal norms will allow that to actually come to fruition…less sure on that.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  The market will force their hand. If your competitor replaces its entire customer service with AI agents that talk like real people with an American accent (the tech is almost there) and reports lower costs and higher profits, you will have no choice but to follow along. India’s tech sector is almost entirely dominated by low paid, low skilled tech labor. TCS and Infosys combined employ over a million people. To give you an indication of the skill gap, a fresh college graduate who joins TCS usually gets $4,500-5,000 per year. Meanwhile a VC funded startup product company will usually pay $30-40,000 per year. I really don’t see how these $5k/year employees aren’t replaced by AI agents.
  - Uw7yTcf36gTc 4y ago
    i haven't seen it posted before, but i've noticed many (if not all) Checker's (Rally's for some) burger restaurants have automated drive-thru order taker. You speak what you want and can upgrade sizes and so on and I've never had it not get my order correct. Newer versions with the ChatGPT-like AI is definitely closer than people think. and Customer Service jobs are a very large amount of employment here and overseas. Bad for lots of people.

meany 4y ago

I am very worried about the potential impacts of AI across all societies. However, I think a reasonable argument can be made that providing all Kenyans access to the knowledge of ChatGPT could accelerate the nations development, rather than just eliminate all options. I’m not saying that is what will happen, but I am not sure AI futurists are lying to themselves. I don’t know how any side in this debate can be sure they are right. In fact, I think the best argument against the AI futurist argument is the wild uncertainty of what will happen and risks associated with that.

maerF0x0 4y ago

I wont go as far as to say its "Good" full stop, but Kenya (and other less developed nations, relative to US) have an opportunity to base their economy on the next thing, rather than incumbents which must unwind policy and allow long term investments to fall to unacceptable ROI (often bankruptcy) ... Consider telephone and credit card networks. Some countries skipped straight to mobile/wireless telephony (with internet!) while the US had to make the "this region already is wired, why are we putting a cell tower there?" (this played out in the 90s). Similar has happened with creditcard terminals in USA, where other countries got better infrastructure faster because there wasnt a competing incumbent investment in place.

g9yuayon 4y ago

> If there was other global knowledge work available to Kenyans I’m sure they’d take it. I'm not sure the logic stands. Following the same logic, I can also argue that of course looting should not exist, but it does. Looter could've taken a decent job if they could find one. Plagiarism shouldn't exist, but it does. The cheating students could've avoid cheating if they could get higher scores so they can find a decent job. And on and on. What's wrong is wrong. Period.

ghiculescu 4y ago
Looting is a crime. Writing an essay isn’t. (Maybe it’s not allowed for the college student.)
- g9yuayon 4y ago
  Writing an essay for someone else is cheating. It's still wrong. Just not as punishable as a crime. BTW, cheating in Keju (Chinese imperial examination) is a capitol crime, as it undermined the fairness of the system and the quality of the ruling class, and derived the chances of other poor candidates. Not that I think cheating is serious, mind you, just wanted to give perspective on how different cultures perceive cheating and the underlying rationales.