6 ms·

This is a weird article. It starts with an anecdote about someone extremely poor who really needs some money, and how that person found a job with flexible hour

This is a weird article. It starts with an anecdote about someone extremely poor who really needs some money, and how that person found a job with flexible hours and comfortable working conditions which paid relatively well. And then the article acts like this is obviously a horrible scandal that must be stopped. Even if the allegations of "traumatizing content" are true and not exaggerated cherry-picking, shouldn't the decisions here be made by the people actually involved? When well-meaning, well-fed people take away their choices (and income), this isn't exactly doing them a favor.

jstarfish 3y ago
That's the moral dilemma. In a just world, people wouldn't have to sell their bodies or break their minds in order to eat. But we don't live in a just world, so until we do, denying them opportunities over "ethics" is condemning them to worse treatment elsewhere-- or starvation. Hungry people don't care about the opinions of fat academics pontificating about Ethics.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  great emotional appeal - yet there is more than enough food in a lot of the world, for the last fifty years, and much longer. Starving people are somehow close by warring people, want to bet? It is problems of Empire, how to transmit $2USD to the edges while pulling the real control to the center. young workers in dire conditions are generally docile and replaceable, right?
okdood64 3y ago
Outrage porn. Nothing new.
- LtWorf 3y ago
  Send your own kids to watch photos of dicks and decide if they are dicks or not.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
mattdeboard 3y ago
Your critique of the article is sensible to a point. But your analysis is incomplete. I’m gonna lay out a few predicates hopefully we can all agree on as true, then get to my point. First, hopefully you can agree that, fundamentally, the company paying these child workers is trading money for labor. (This shouldn’t be controversial, it’s a fact of labor markets.) Second, the companies paying these children are extracting value from their labor greater than what they are paying the child laborers. Third, the employers chose laborers located “predominantly … in East Africa, Venezuela, Pakistan, India, and the Philippines” for this work because that’s where they can pay the least in labor costs while still extracting value. Fourth, keeping labor costs as low as possible while extracting maximum value is the most rational course of action. Fifth, and finally, it is very rational for children to seek out & undertake this work — to exchange their labor for money — given the economics of their lives. With these predicates laid out, my point: The reason your analysis doesn’t lead you to thinking this is a raw deal for the children involved is because in a sense, it’s not. Given the economics of their lives, this is, relatively speaking, a good deal. The rawness of the deal only becomes apparent when we start to inspect why material conditions are such that this deal — trading an hour of labor for $2 to a company serving a multi-billion-dollar market — is enticing to children. In other words, this article, in my analysis, is an opportunity to study and question the system that creates the conditions such that there is a labor market comprising children who are available for exploitation for cheap labor by very rich Western companies.
- pjscott 3y ago
  I'll agree with all of 1–5, and elaborate on #2: > Second, the companies paying these children are extracting value from their labor greater than what they are paying the child laborers. This is always the case with employment, assuming that the employer isn't getting ripped off: when two parties make a voluntary trade, they're both getting something they value more than what they're trading away. -- > In other words, this article, in my analysis, is an opportunity to study and question the system that creates the conditions such that there is a labor market comprising children who are available for exploitation for cheap labor by very rich Western companies. I don't see anything that needs explaining here. Poverty is the default. For almost all of human history we were dirt poor. For almost all of agricultural history we were in a hungry, unpleasant Malthusian equilibrium. The real miracle is that things are getting better. And a big part of why things are getting better is because it's possible for richer countries to 'exploit' cheap labor in poorer countries – and help them escape poverty by doing it. It's amusing how companies keep looking for cheap labor in different countries every few years, because the places that used to have the cheapest labor got wealthier because of those opportunities. I realize that not everybody shares my aesthetics, but personally I see this as beautiful, even if the ground-level details are a bit grungy.
ben_w 3y ago
I have every reason to assume the traumatising content examples are the point of the data classification exercise — I mean, filtering such content is probably the single largest expense of large forums and social media sites, so of course loads of people would want to train an AI to do it for them. As for giving people agency over their working conditions… I don't know — every so often there's an argument about prostitution, where people argue against it because it's dangerous, and then someone points out how all work carries some risk and someone says something about capitalism forcing men to effectively sell their lungs to coal mines which are much more dangerous than women selling their bodies, and everyone gets cross and a few months later there's a similar debate like nobody learned anything.
- brightlancer 3y ago
  > and everyone gets cross and a few months later there's a similar debate like nobody learned anything. This sums up online discussions for 30+ years. While some folks never learn, there's also a steady stream of new folks who weren't part of the previous conversations and _will_ learn if given the opportunity. (This is the positive side of the Eternal September.)
morelisp 3y ago
The children yearn for the mines.
bxguff 3y ago
the traumatizing content is a very real part of it, in my experience 'red teaming' LLMs included both reviewing and creating overtly violent, sexual, racist content, via prompt. if you refused the work you got fired. not surprising, but real.

jstarfish 3y ago

That's the moral dilemma. In a just world, people wouldn't have to sell their bodies or break their minds in order to eat. But we don't live in a just world, so until we do, denying them opportunities over "ethics" is condemning them to worse treatment elsewhere-- or starvation. Hungry people don't care about the opinions of fat academics pontificating about Ethics.

mistrial9 3y ago
great emotional appeal - yet there is more than enough food in a lot of the world, for the last fifty years, and much longer. Starving people are somehow close by warring people, want to bet? It is problems of Empire, how to transmit $2USD to the edges while pulling the real control to the center. young workers in dire conditions are generally docile and replaceable, right?

okdood64 3y ago

Outrage porn. Nothing new.

LtWorf 3y ago
Send your own kids to watch photos of dicks and decide if they are dicks or not.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

mattdeboard 3y ago

Your critique of the article is sensible to a point. But your analysis is incomplete. I’m gonna lay out a few predicates hopefully we can all agree on as true, then get to my point. First, hopefully you can agree that, fundamentally, the company paying these child workers is trading money for labor. (This shouldn’t be controversial, it’s a fact of labor markets.) Second, the companies paying these children are extracting value from their labor greater than what they are paying the child laborers. Third, the employers chose laborers located “predominantly … in East Africa, Venezuela, Pakistan, India, and the Philippines” for this work because that’s where they can pay the least in labor costs while still extracting value. Fourth, keeping labor costs as low as possible while extracting maximum value is the most rational course of action. Fifth, and finally, it is very rational for children to seek out & undertake this work — to exchange their labor for money — given the economics of their lives. With these predicates laid out, my point: The reason your analysis doesn’t lead you to thinking this is a raw deal for the children involved is because in a sense, it’s not. Given the economics of their lives, this is, relatively speaking, a good deal. The rawness of the deal only becomes apparent when we start to inspect why material conditions are such that this deal — trading an hour of labor for $2 to a company serving a multi-billion-dollar market — is enticing to children. In other words, this article, in my analysis, is an opportunity to study and question the system that creates the conditions such that there is a labor market comprising children who are available for exploitation for cheap labor by very rich Western companies.

pjscott 3y ago
I'll agree with all of 1–5, and elaborate on #2: > Second, the companies paying these children are extracting value from their labor greater than what they are paying the child laborers. This is always the case with employment, assuming that the employer isn't getting ripped off: when two parties make a voluntary trade, they're both getting something they value more than what they're trading away. -- > In other words, this article, in my analysis, is an opportunity to study and question the system that creates the conditions such that there is a labor market comprising children who are available for exploitation for cheap labor by very rich Western companies. I don't see anything that needs explaining here. Poverty is the default. For almost all of human history we were dirt poor. For almost all of agricultural history we were in a hungry, unpleasant Malthusian equilibrium. The real miracle is that things are getting better. And a big part of why things are getting better is because it's possible for richer countries to 'exploit' cheap labor in poorer countries – and help them escape poverty by doing it. It's amusing how companies keep looking for cheap labor in different countries every few years, because the places that used to have the cheapest labor got wealthier because of those opportunities. I realize that not everybody shares my aesthetics, but personally I see this as beautiful, even if the ground-level details are a bit grungy.

ben_w 3y ago

I have every reason to assume the traumatising content examples are the point of the data classification exercise — I mean, filtering such content is probably the single largest expense of large forums and social media sites, so of course loads of people would want to train an AI to do it for them. As for giving people agency over their working conditions… I don't know — every so often there's an argument about prostitution, where people argue against it because it's dangerous, and then someone points out how all work carries some risk and someone says something about capitalism forcing men to effectively sell their lungs to coal mines which are much more dangerous than women selling their bodies, and everyone gets cross and a few months later there's a similar debate like nobody learned anything.

brightlancer 3y ago
> and everyone gets cross and a few months later there's a similar debate like nobody learned anything. This sums up online discussions for 30+ years. While some folks never learn, there's also a steady stream of new folks who weren't part of the previous conversations and _will_ learn if given the opportunity. (This is the positive side of the Eternal September.)

morelisp 3y ago

The children yearn for the mines.

bxguff 3y ago

the traumatizing content is a very real part of it, in my experience 'red teaming' LLMs included both reviewing and creating overtly violent, sexual, racist content, via prompt. if you refused the work you got fired. not surprising, but real.