16 ms·

African Workers for ChatGPT, TikTok and Facebook Vote to Unionize

321 points by jaredwiener 3y ago

htk 3y ago
Talk about a job that can be replaced by AI in the near future.
neilv 3y ago
Good for them. There have been some awful stories about how difficult -- and sometimes traumatic -- the content moderation work can be. When content moderation of really nasty stuff is necessary, people doing it should be getting proper safeguards, care, compensation, and respect.
- anonylizard 3y ago
  Don't worry, content moderation for most services, will be performed by GPTs in max 2 years. Pretty sure GPT-4 already exceeds human labellers on average for simple moderation tasks (ie facebook comments, not say reddit communities with fine nuance). The only moderation workers left, will be for the AI companies, and the efficiency here is train once-use multiple times. If you are going to outsource that function to some other country, might as well outsource it to GPT, cheaper faster better, with no ethical concerns or bad press. So those workers don't have to experience those traumas again! They do however have to experience the trauma of unemployment. So be careful what you wish for.
  - version_five 3y ago
    Getting ML to reliably do something specific like flag an image as inappropriate is (a) already well known in the field (b) impossible to do reliably and not getting easier, which is exactly why these comment moderation places exist. Otherwise we'd already be doing it. None of the recent advances are in a direction that brings us closer to being able to do this. I think you're probably in the majority though who misunderstands what gpt et al are doing and think of them as an advance in ML generally as opposed to just a different demo that works most of the time.
    - anonylizard 3y ago
      Are you sure about that? We haven't seen what GPT-4 multimodal can do in the wild, it can even take into context the full conversation history in addition to just the images. If it can understand visual jokes easily, are you sure it can't detect CSAM? We can also reliably GENERATE inappropriate content now, by simply adding a 'nsfw' tag to Stable diffusion, it flips a normal image to an inappropriate one. It doesn't sound very difficult to reverse this. Also, for these services, you don't need it to be perfect. If even the flagging accuracy goes up significantly, that's a lot fewer human workers to review it. The AI ecosystem as a whole is also booming massively regarding hardware, datasets, talent, software infrastructure. So that makes development in traditional ML faster.
      - waboremo 3y ago
        As someone who is very optimistic about GPT, you are utterly misunderstanding what content moderation teams deal with if you think GPT can accurately assess a majority of their cases. The accuracy will not go up significantly if humans are already struggling, and I'm not talking about the mental aspects of the job, I'm talking about being unable to determine if the case is accurately violating TOS or not. This is going to get even more difficult, for both humans and AI, when content is being generated at alarmingly fast rates by AI. So even with the use of AI to combat AI, there is still going to be a gigantic tidal wave of questionable shit to go through.
    - ryanjshaw 3y ago
      The options aren't 100% human vs. 100% AI, though? I'm no expert so maybe you can clarify why high accuracy/reliability is that important for an initial analysis by AI? I would expect the vast majority of reports are straightforward matters? There's a human poster involved, who can trigger a review if they disagree with the decision, and that review can be attended to by a much smaller pool of humans.
  - tysam_and 3y ago
    To nitpick a tiny bit, I feel there's always going to be humans, but the noisy filter of deep learning will help cut down on it a bit.
  - burglins 3y ago
    > Pretty sure GPT-4 already exceeds human labellers on average for simple moderation tasks (ie facebook comments, not say reddit communities with fine nuance). AFAIK reddit mods and "fine nuance" are oxymorons
- ls-lah_33 3y ago
  Worth noting that the company they work for is called Sama, which if I'm not mistaken, derives its name from the word 'equal' in Sanskrit. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2010-08-03-samasource-a-cyber-solution-to-global-poverty/ https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2010-08-03-samasourc...
jollofricepeas 3y ago
A drop. A trickle. Then a flood. The labor movement is resurging and rightly so. We need to welcome this or prepare for violent revolution globally. Wealth inequality is cyclical with the same outcomes throughout history - voluntary or violent wealth redistribution.
- geodel 3y ago
  I love violent revolutions, they always lead to lovely results where ever or whenever they occur.
  - mitthrowaway2 3y ago
    (GP's comment does not appear to be advocating for violent revolutions.)
  - thebradbain 3y ago
    Well, they usually end up with the people everyone was most angry at for causing the circumstances that lead up to the revolution powerless or dead, as an explicit aim. So regardless of who ends up in charge after or if that regime succeeds, you can’t say revolutions themselves are not frighteningly effective. After all, every existing country on earth is the result of a revolution against the leaders of its past.
    - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
      Depends on whether the real goal is "kill those people" or "make a better life for the rest of us". The first is easy; the second is harder.
      - autoexec 3y ago
        I assume it often starts with "kill those people" and once that nasty business is out of the way and new people are selected to replace them there's a very strongly implied "Now you people make a better life for the rest of us, or else we will go back to the 'kill those people' step and repeat as needed."
cieucudhg 3y ago
Wish them the best but they only have their jobs because of outsourcing— they’re the cheapest labor available. Ask for too much and the jobs will go to India or anywhere else.
- anonylizard 3y ago
  Yeah, they have quite a sad understanding of their bargaining power. 1. Their job easily replaceable by any english speaking, high school educated worker on a planetary level. 2. There is almost no capital expenditure to setup a 'moderation centre', just setup a bunch of computers in an office and you are done. So workers don't have leverage over a company that is unwilling to move. 3. AI will annihilate probably 80% of the offshore call center business in a few years, the workers laid off from call centers, can 1-1 slot into these AI-RL training jobs. Heck AI will also annihilate 80% of those offshore moderation jobs for say facebook. So more competition. Frankly, the AI companies doesn't even need to move to another country, they can just hire non-unionized workers in those same african countries. When they will do this, depends on when the union asks for too high of a wage. The most optimistic outcome, is the unions try to work with the AI companies in asking for better conditions, but not neccessarily much better wages. Overplay their hand and they will fail.
  - yawboakye 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - digdigdag 3y ago
    1. These jobs are situated in Africa for the precise reason that other usual outsourcing countries have become increasingly expensive and prohibitive for this type of work. These workers are exposed to the most vile things the human mind can produce and they do it for starvation wages day in and day out. 2. Their leverage is their sanity and willingness to be able to be exposed to unconscionable content. Many places in the world would categorically block this kind of gig simply for being damaging to the mind, and rightly so. And even in countries where this work is permissible, it would otherwise expose the company to future liability in terms of emotional trauma. 3. This 80% figure is a number fabricated from thin air. These workers don't work in call centers. They are content moderators in some shape or form -- a job that requires not just reading comprehension but being able to weigh certain current events, cultural queues, unspoken and spoken language, and other data that you can't magically feed into a machine. S
nimbius 3y ago
"African Workers for ChatGPT" this reveal is easily worth more than the union itself. If you were a futurist, a FAANG thought leader or an evangelist for AI, this should be all you need to know to realize ChatGPT isnt the future. if youre using chatgpt in a call center, then this is just H1B or other labor fraud with more steps.
- ironmagma 3y ago
  Only if you don’t know the concept of a bootloader. That which is necessary now will not be in the future.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- RugnirViking 3y ago
  they are used for RLHF, its training the AI. Machine learning in general requires a shitton of high quality labelled data. Labelling the data is usually very tedious, and often done via mechanical turk etc. African workers arent able to write a unique 500 word story about whatever scenario you dream up in about a second in whatever language you choose.
erulabs 3y ago
Just in time for re-shoring jobs to become a popular topic. I fear these workers may have bit the extremely frugal hand that feeds.
- advisedwang 3y ago
  There's plenty of room between $1.50 per hour and US pay rates.
  - UncleEntity 3y ago
    Once they get rid of the easiest to replace domestic white collar workers they still need a market to sell their goods into. I predict the next Federal Works Program will be for unemployable web programmers and not completely unlike the old ones for displaced farmers. With subsidies and tax breaks I think, if we try hard enough, we can get the actual wages paid by the companies below $2/hr.
boringuser2 3y ago
>Despite the mental toll of the work, which has left many content moderators suffering from PTSD, their jobs are some of the lowest-paid in the global tech industry, with some workers earning as little as $1.50 per hour It kind of blows my mind that this it's legal for an American corporation to employ third world slave labor instead of American citizens.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  > It kind of blows my mind that this it's legal for an American corporation to employ third world slave labor instead of American citizens. What will blow your mind even more is that even when Americans, Europeans, or others in rich countries know about this, do they care? Do they boycott those companies? No they don't... Because they want stuff and they want it cheap.
  - thunky 3y ago
    I get your point but sadly I don't think that will blow anyone's mind.
  - boringuser2 3y ago
    It's not incumbent on individual citizens to stop corporations. We lack the resources and wherewithal to do so. These companies are doing things that should be made to be illegal.
    - charcircuit 3y ago
      >that should be made to be illegal. Paying a wage that both parties agree to should not be illegal.
      - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
        Nestle and others have frequently admitted to literal slave labour https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/mar/02/nestle-admits-slave-labour-risk-on-brazil-coffee-plantations https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/mar/02/n...
Proven 3y ago
[dead]
derelicta 3y ago
Very much happy for them.
5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
> "all employed by third party outsourcing companies" > "Meta’s lawyers said that Motaung was employed by Sama, ...that No action can therefore be brought against Meta...as Meta was not and has never been his employer.” that's how it works.
joypatels 3y ago
[dead]

321 points by jaredwiener 3y ago

htk 3y ago

Talk about a job that can be replaced by AI in the near future.

Good for them. There have been some awful stories about how difficult -- and sometimes traumatic -- the content moderation work can be. When content moderation of really nasty stuff is necessary, people doing it should be getting proper safeguards, care, compensation, and respect.

anonylizard 3y ago
Don't worry, content moderation for most services, will be performed by GPTs in max 2 years. Pretty sure GPT-4 already exceeds human labellers on average for simple moderation tasks (ie facebook comments, not say reddit communities with fine nuance). The only moderation workers left, will be for the AI companies, and the efficiency here is train once-use multiple times. If you are going to outsource that function to some other country, might as well outsource it to GPT, cheaper faster better, with no ethical concerns or bad press. So those workers don't have to experience those traumas again! They do however have to experience the trauma of unemployment. So be careful what you wish for.
- version_five 3y ago
  Getting ML to reliably do something specific like flag an image as inappropriate is (a) already well known in the field (b) impossible to do reliably and not getting easier, which is exactly why these comment moderation places exist. Otherwise we'd already be doing it. None of the recent advances are in a direction that brings us closer to being able to do this. I think you're probably in the majority though who misunderstands what gpt et al are doing and think of them as an advance in ML generally as opposed to just a different demo that works most of the time.
  - anonylizard 3y ago
    Are you sure about that? We haven't seen what GPT-4 multimodal can do in the wild, it can even take into context the full conversation history in addition to just the images. If it can understand visual jokes easily, are you sure it can't detect CSAM? We can also reliably GENERATE inappropriate content now, by simply adding a 'nsfw' tag to Stable diffusion, it flips a normal image to an inappropriate one. It doesn't sound very difficult to reverse this. Also, for these services, you don't need it to be perfect. If even the flagging accuracy goes up significantly, that's a lot fewer human workers to review it. The AI ecosystem as a whole is also booming massively regarding hardware, datasets, talent, software infrastructure. So that makes development in traditional ML faster.
    - waboremo 3y ago
      As someone who is very optimistic about GPT, you are utterly misunderstanding what content moderation teams deal with if you think GPT can accurately assess a majority of their cases. The accuracy will not go up significantly if humans are already struggling, and I'm not talking about the mental aspects of the job, I'm talking about being unable to determine if the case is accurately violating TOS or not. This is going to get even more difficult, for both humans and AI, when content is being generated at alarmingly fast rates by AI. So even with the use of AI to combat AI, there is still going to be a gigantic tidal wave of questionable shit to go through.
  - ryanjshaw 3y ago
    The options aren't 100% human vs. 100% AI, though? I'm no expert so maybe you can clarify why high accuracy/reliability is that important for an initial analysis by AI? I would expect the vast majority of reports are straightforward matters? There's a human poster involved, who can trigger a review if they disagree with the decision, and that review can be attended to by a much smaller pool of humans.
- tysam_and 3y ago
  To nitpick a tiny bit, I feel there's always going to be humans, but the noisy filter of deep learning will help cut down on it a bit.
- burglins 3y ago
  > Pretty sure GPT-4 already exceeds human labellers on average for simple moderation tasks (ie facebook comments, not say reddit communities with fine nuance). AFAIK reddit mods and "fine nuance" are oxymorons
ls-lah_33 3y ago
Worth noting that the company they work for is called Sama, which if I'm not mistaken, derives its name from the word 'equal' in Sanskrit. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2010-08-03-samasource-a-cyber-solution-to-global-poverty/ https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2010-08-03-samasourc...

jollofricepeas 3y ago

A drop. A trickle. Then a flood. The labor movement is resurging and rightly so. We need to welcome this or prepare for violent revolution globally. Wealth inequality is cyclical with the same outcomes throughout history - voluntary or violent wealth redistribution.

geodel 3y ago
I love violent revolutions, they always lead to lovely results where ever or whenever they occur.
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago
  (GP's comment does not appear to be advocating for violent revolutions.)
- thebradbain 3y ago
  Well, they usually end up with the people everyone was most angry at for causing the circumstances that lead up to the revolution powerless or dead, as an explicit aim. So regardless of who ends up in charge after or if that regime succeeds, you can’t say revolutions themselves are not frighteningly effective. After all, every existing country on earth is the result of a revolution against the leaders of its past.
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    Depends on whether the real goal is "kill those people" or "make a better life for the rest of us". The first is easy; the second is harder.
    - autoexec 3y ago
      I assume it often starts with "kill those people" and once that nasty business is out of the way and new people are selected to replace them there's a very strongly implied "Now you people make a better life for the rest of us, or else we will go back to the 'kill those people' step and repeat as needed."

cieucudhg 3y ago

Wish them the best but they only have their jobs because of outsourcing— they’re the cheapest labor available. Ask for too much and the jobs will go to India or anywhere else.

anonylizard 3y ago
Yeah, they have quite a sad understanding of their bargaining power. 1. Their job easily replaceable by any english speaking, high school educated worker on a planetary level. 2. There is almost no capital expenditure to setup a 'moderation centre', just setup a bunch of computers in an office and you are done. So workers don't have leverage over a company that is unwilling to move. 3. AI will annihilate probably 80% of the offshore call center business in a few years, the workers laid off from call centers, can 1-1 slot into these AI-RL training jobs. Heck AI will also annihilate 80% of those offshore moderation jobs for say facebook. So more competition. Frankly, the AI companies doesn't even need to move to another country, they can just hire non-unionized workers in those same african countries. When they will do this, depends on when the union asks for too high of a wage. The most optimistic outcome, is the unions try to work with the AI companies in asking for better conditions, but not neccessarily much better wages. Overplay their hand and they will fail.
- yawboakye 3y ago
  [flagged]
- digdigdag 3y ago
  1. These jobs are situated in Africa for the precise reason that other usual outsourcing countries have become increasingly expensive and prohibitive for this type of work. These workers are exposed to the most vile things the human mind can produce and they do it for starvation wages day in and day out. 2. Their leverage is their sanity and willingness to be able to be exposed to unconscionable content. Many places in the world would categorically block this kind of gig simply for being damaging to the mind, and rightly so. And even in countries where this work is permissible, it would otherwise expose the company to future liability in terms of emotional trauma. 3. This 80% figure is a number fabricated from thin air. These workers don't work in call centers. They are content moderators in some shape or form -- a job that requires not just reading comprehension but being able to weigh certain current events, cultural queues, unspoken and spoken language, and other data that you can't magically feed into a machine. S

nimbius 3y ago

"African Workers for ChatGPT" this reveal is easily worth more than the union itself. If you were a futurist, a FAANG thought leader or an evangelist for AI, this should be all you need to know to realize ChatGPT isnt the future. if youre using chatgpt in a call center, then this is just H1B or other labor fraud with more steps.

ironmagma 3y ago
Only if you don’t know the concept of a bootloader. That which is necessary now will not be in the future.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
RugnirViking 3y ago
they are used for RLHF, its training the AI. Machine learning in general requires a shitton of high quality labelled data. Labelling the data is usually very tedious, and often done via mechanical turk etc. African workers arent able to write a unique 500 word story about whatever scenario you dream up in about a second in whatever language you choose.

erulabs 3y ago

Just in time for re-shoring jobs to become a popular topic. I fear these workers may have bit the extremely frugal hand that feeds.

advisedwang 3y ago
There's plenty of room between $1.50 per hour and US pay rates.
- UncleEntity 3y ago
  Once they get rid of the easiest to replace domestic white collar workers they still need a market to sell their goods into. I predict the next Federal Works Program will be for unemployable web programmers and not completely unlike the old ones for displaced farmers. With subsidies and tax breaks I think, if we try hard enough, we can get the actual wages paid by the companies below $2/hr.

boringuser2 3y ago

>Despite the mental toll of the work, which has left many content moderators suffering from PTSD, their jobs are some of the lowest-paid in the global tech industry, with some workers earning as little as $1.50 per hour It kind of blows my mind that this it's legal for an American corporation to employ third world slave labor instead of American citizens.

andsoitis 3y ago
> It kind of blows my mind that this it's legal for an American corporation to employ third world slave labor instead of American citizens. What will blow your mind even more is that even when Americans, Europeans, or others in rich countries know about this, do they care? Do they boycott those companies? No they don't... Because they want stuff and they want it cheap.
- thunky 3y ago
  I get your point but sadly I don't think that will blow anyone's mind.
- boringuser2 3y ago
  It's not incumbent on individual citizens to stop corporations. We lack the resources and wherewithal to do so. These companies are doing things that should be made to be illegal.
  - charcircuit 3y ago
    >that should be made to be illegal. Paying a wage that both parties agree to should not be illegal.
    - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
      Nestle and others have frequently admitted to literal slave labour https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/mar/02/nestle-admits-slave-labour-risk-on-brazil-coffee-plantations https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/mar/02/n...

Proven 3y ago

[dead]

derelicta 3y ago

Very much happy for them.

5350-uiop-1130 3y ago

> "all employed by third party outsourcing companies" > "Meta’s lawyers said that Motaung was employed by Sama, ...that No action can therefore be brought against Meta...as Meta was not and has never been his employer.” that's how it works.

joypatels 3y ago

[dead]