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So, I do this type of AI development for solving CAPTCHAs. I can't get any real jobs that pay me for my more advanced skills. My primary sins were going to a s
by reaperman 2y ago
So, I do this type of AI development for solving CAPTCHAs.
I can't get any real jobs that pay me for my more advanced skills. My primary sins were going to a second/third-tier university and some performance concerns in a portion of my previous roles due to divorce and burn-out. I make $80k/year in government IT, and $30-150k/year as the "AI" guy in a small 2-5 person group that offers a CAPTCHA-breaking API.
The spammers aren't the ones replicating this. They just pay B2B rates (combo of SaaS + Consulting, depending on client needs) to help them remove the roadblocks.
- blackjackfoe 2y agoIs your company hiring? :)
- benreesman 2y agoIf there were a totally 100% aboveboard way to do this in a net transfer of utility from Tessier-Ashopool SA to the typical web surfer I would be a superfan.
- HeckFeck 2y agoWhy do you do this? While I can appreciate the technical achievement, you know most users of forums and imageboards don’t want any AI content at all.
- KomoD 2y ago> Why do you do this? Money, obviously. I'd also do it for $30-150k/year > you know most users of forums and imageboards don’t want any AI content at all. He's not creating or posting any "AI content"?
- HeckFeck 2y agoOkay, but you know his actions are enabling more AI content and spam to proliferate? I hardly think he is making that much money just because legitimate users don't want to fill in a captcha.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- brookst 2y agoIt’s very easy to opine about the ethics others should have. Different when it’s you and your family and a comparatively easy effort will make a material difference in quality of life. And especially when you know ghe market need will be met by someone else anyway.
- IWeldMelons 2y agoIf someone is making a brazen statement of being "a bad guy because 80K is not enough, and could not find anything decent for those extra $30K" what kind of treatment would they expect?
- xp84 2y agoI’d argue that someone cracking CAPTCHAs has a lot less dirty hands than someone who works in an actually scummy industry like US health insurance. Those companies literally kill people by denying them care to pinch pennies. This guy might cause a little more spam on the already useless mess that is YouTube comments. Who cares. I’d take the money, too.
- IWeldMelons 2y agoTypical US-centric way of thinking. If your healthcare system is crippled it does not justify making internet mess for everyone else in the world.
- lostlogin 2y agoI’d have suggested adtech before health insurers.
- RHSman2 2y agoTobacco pays real well
- 2y ago
- Forgeties79 2y agoPeople who do jobs like that don’t really care about the impact
- Der_Einzige 2y agoBeing able to spam and mind control 4chan would be amazing just for personal reasons, let alone how juicy that is to governments around the world!
- lukas099 2y agoIt's working for the Russians.
- noprocrasted 2y agoThe percentage of captchas used to deter spam is probably a minority these days. A lot of captchas nowadays are used to prevent adversarial interoperability or the free flow of information. If you want to spam, you don't actually need to break many captchas. Just make your spam/scam/misinformation "engaging" enough and the social media platforms will host and promote your spam _for free_ and won't even ask a captcha.
- reaperman 2y agoThis precisely. Our clients are generally looking at adversarial interoperability. But the rhetoric around the assumption that I was doing it for spammers was also interesting, as well as being more closely related to TFA!
- ryandrake 2y agoDespite the spamming angle, I think CAPTCHA-breaking is, on the balance, noble and honorable work. These things are user-hostile blights on the web, and any effort towards making them disappear as useless is worthwhile. Sites worried about spam should invest more in automated spam classification/elimination instead of punishing real users with CAPTCHA-solving. Not that I can offer a solution--if I could, I'd be a millionaire.
- persnickety 2y agoWho do you think spam classification false positives are going to be pubishing if not real users? At least with a captcha, you have some idea that you were rejected before you put in the effort to write your comment.
- jostinian 2y agoI am a nafri with a PhD and engineering experience (with europeans), I can't make good living going the traditional way either with with remote jobs being impossible and no luck landing a visa.. I have built custom solutions for big name EU companies to keep an eye on the competition through scraping. captcha solving cloudflare bypass is a great part of that. Getting back at companies making the UX bad with captcha does feel good also.
- ape4 2y ago$30-150k/year is a big range
- TZubiri 2y agoAhh the good ole dilemma of selling your soul, you study what you love only to destroy it for profit. Like an entomologist hired by a pesticide company. I get it man, gotta make the bucks helping spammers advertise their shitty products, even if they destroy the internet.
- noprocrasted 2y agoWhat about the spammers that already destroyed the internet by steering it entirely towards advertising & surveillance capitalism? It's like the pot calling the kettle black. We're all complicit in the enshittification of the internet and technology in general, just that we delude ourselves into believing we're on the "good" side because we call it "advertising" or "marketing" or "analytics" instead of spam, more spam and spyware. The end result is exactly the same however.
- TZubiri 2y agoIf you are referring to google. It's what financially powers most of the free as in beer internet, so hard disagree. There's a difference between parasites that spam and make 1000 free gmail accounts. And Google.