4 ms·

I find it a bit odd how this article conflates content moderation for social network with AI training. Of course there is a relationship there but these are not

I find it a bit odd how this article conflates content moderation for social network with AI training. Of course there is a relationship there but these are not the same thing. The article gives lots of examples of trauma caused by content moderation and then blames it on the needs of AI. If anything, if we could satisfactorily train an AI for content moderation then humans wouldn't need to be in the loop (as much) so it's a weird thing to just put these ideas together like that, and is clearly just trying to feed the current zeitgeist of "AI bad".

j45 2y ago
Is it odd? AI being trained for content moderation for social media... Social media seems to be downstream from training AI to recognize and categorize content.
- radarsat1 2y ago
  Sure but my point is that you could write exactly the same article without mentioning AI at all, since the majority of examples are about content moderation for social media. Meanwhile the only connection to AI is that it might provide a potential reduction in the need for this. So what is odd to me is positioning this as the purpose being for feeding the ever hungry data needs of evil algorithms, because as far as I can tell without those algorithms these jobs would still exist and would be worse.
  - j45 2y ago
    Hmm. Isn’t “AI” is an algorithm too? Writing about training a content moderation AI by humans marking metadata on the content for AI seems to be throughout the article. “Might” provide a potential reduction feels like a stretch. LLMs literally are decent at receiving input and prompting “tell me about this”. There is a less than desirable human price being paid to encode content to train an algorithm. Maybe if it was done by someone with tech skills they could reduce it.. instead, for now, it appears to be outsourced to traumatize people who don’t have the health support and salaries to build the AI to begin with. Someone is choosing to send this work far, far, away to a much more vulnerable population, and maybe in time it doesn’t have to be that way. If any group is capable to make a difference in reducing any questions about this approach it’s the most capable in the tech, not the least. Content recognition is something AI done before the current wave of AI pretty well. If anything this might boost things like OpenCV. Training a content moderation AI is meant to do what social media hasn’t been able to do, moderate content in large ways other than using humans. AI a popular word right now in zeitgeist, it doesn’t meant it’s beyond being connected to everything that already exists, when it’s based on existing knowledge and practices.

j45 2y ago

Is it odd? AI being trained for content moderation for social media... Social media seems to be downstream from training AI to recognize and categorize content.

radarsat1 2y ago
Sure but my point is that you could write exactly the same article without mentioning AI at all, since the majority of examples are about content moderation for social media. Meanwhile the only connection to AI is that it might provide a potential reduction in the need for this. So what is odd to me is positioning this as the purpose being for feeding the ever hungry data needs of evil algorithms, because as far as I can tell without those algorithms these jobs would still exist and would be worse.
- j45 2y ago
  Hmm. Isn’t “AI” is an algorithm too? Writing about training a content moderation AI by humans marking metadata on the content for AI seems to be throughout the article. “Might” provide a potential reduction feels like a stretch. LLMs literally are decent at receiving input and prompting “tell me about this”. There is a less than desirable human price being paid to encode content to train an algorithm. Maybe if it was done by someone with tech skills they could reduce it.. instead, for now, it appears to be outsourced to traumatize people who don’t have the health support and salaries to build the AI to begin with. Someone is choosing to send this work far, far, away to a much more vulnerable population, and maybe in time it doesn’t have to be that way. If any group is capable to make a difference in reducing any questions about this approach it’s the most capable in the tech, not the least. Content recognition is something AI done before the current wave of AI pretty well. If anything this might boost things like OpenCV. Training a content moderation AI is meant to do what social media hasn’t been able to do, moderate content in large ways other than using humans. AI a popular word right now in zeitgeist, it doesn’t meant it’s beyond being connected to everything that already exists, when it’s based on existing knowledge and practices.