Yet another Hacker News

Brown student maps the hidden global labor powering AI

56 points cdrnsf 2 hours ago 43 comments

datsci_est_2015 59 minutes ago | parent

Doing the hard work of mapping out the complex ways workers (labor) and corporate entities (capital) interact across national boundaries should be applauded, especially given the historical context that such relationships are highly exploitative.

foco_tubi 54 minutes ago | parent

I think if a certain HN crowd doesn’t like the phrasing of “AI colonialism,” just substitute in “capitalism” and maybe it’ll sit better with your personal opinion (for better or worse).

toomuchtodo 50 minutes ago | parent

It's so interesting that the underlying mechanisms never really change, just the trimmings and how they're dressed up.

lilbigdoot 5 minutes ago | parent

One thing never changes: class warfare :o

MaxHoppersGhost 45 minutes ago | parent

Providing relatively good paying jobs that people can do while sitting in an air conditioned room is hardly colonialism and it cheapens the word when we call it that. This isn't in the same universe as being forced to work to death in a sugarcane field or a gold mine.

ToucanLoucan 37 minutes ago | parent

> Providing relatively good paying jobs that people can do while sitting in an air conditioned room is hardly colonialism and it cheapens the word when we call it that.

Definition: Colonialism is the practice by which a state or power extends and maintains political, social, economic, and cultural domination over a foreign territory and its people.

So yes, at scale, a rich country (political domination) employing people en masse in the developing world (economic domination), in this case showing them a slideshow of all the objectionable content westerners share, is colonialism.

The fact that it even exists as an option to simply "export" undesirable tasks to people overseas that you don't see and don't care about is itself an extension of and the maintenance of colonialism.

DonaldPShimoda 33 minutes ago | parent

> Providing relatively good paying jobs that people can do while sitting in an air conditioned room is hardly colonialism

Their local environments are being destroyed, city and state governance corrupted, regular jobs muscled out, electricity used exorbitantly, psyches damaged, and so much more all in the name of extracting low-cost labor from the less privileged — and thus readily exploited — halfway across the globe, but sure, definitely not colonialism.

Colonialism doesn't mean you make people do back-breaking manual labor; it means you exploit people far away to extract capital from where they are so people nearby can enjoy the fruits of others without having to do the work themselves.

poszlem 24 minutes ago | parent

It's hardly just a "certain HN crowd" idea. This is genuinely one of those technologies that might bring about the return of colonialism and empires. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/empires-artificial-inte...

lilbigdoot 5 minutes ago | parent

The fact basically this entire comment section has been downvoted says so much about HN

simianwords 52 minutes ago | parent

There's a certain elitist mindset that thinks all real value is in hard labour like farming, construction and white collar work is shown to be fake and exploitative.

> To filter out disturbing images or posts, or to keep chatbots from creating such content, AI systems have to be able to recognize it. That means that data workers must view horrifying images or text passages to label that content

This kind of work is definitely preferable to poverty, or even preferable to toiling in the farms. Its a decent job and some one has to do it and I'm glad someone who needs the money is doing it. I think it is misleading to portray this kind of job as uniquely harmful or stressful.

free_bip 46 minutes ago | parent

Spoken like someone who's never had to do it.

lukas099 18 minutes ago | parent

Isn't it kind of patriarchal to say that people in the third world shouldn't do jobs that they choose to do, because people in the first world think it's too exploitative? Give them tools that let them connect to other workers and organize, sure, but I think we should respect their autonomy to take the jobs they want to take.

simianwords 12 minutes ago | parent

You mean patronizing? In that case yes it is patronizing

pona-a 10 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

alistairSH 8 minutes ago | parent

Not really - studies have linked these jobs to severe phycological distress. They aren't "good jobs" in the sense that "software developer" is a good job. They're actively harmful to the person's mental well-being.

jefurii 33 minutes ago | parent

People in white shirts can't sit in air-conditioned rooms and program computers if other people aren't out there growing and harvesting and shipping food.

lukas099 21 minutes ago | parent

What are you refuting by saying this? They didn't discount the importance of agriculture.

ticulatedspline 33 minutes ago | parent

> Its a decent job and some one has to do it

someone has to do it but it's not a decent job. Content tagging and content moderation are basically the "ditch digging" of the white collar world and often comes with significant toll on those exposed to such content continuously.

kylecazar 29 minutes ago | parent

We consider psychological stress in a different category than physical. It's seen as uniquely cruel because it corrupts intangible things like identity and humanity, not knees and joints. We get physically laborious jobs. They're grueling but we understand the inputs, outputs and the toll.

Putting someone in front of the worst of humanity (CSAM, murder, suicide, bestiality etc) for 9 hours a day at $2/hr seems inhumane because it may very well change who they are and how they think. Add to that the fact that it's sponsored by the richest companies on the planet for the benefit of the upper half and you get the current, IMO justified, criticisms.

logicallee 48 minutes ago | parent

The second time I read the output I pay for, some of the words are modified to say the opposite. Is there a map of the hidden global labor powering that?

christkv 43 minutes ago | parent

I saw "AI colonialism", looked at her LinkedIn and yeah she is an activist so all objectivity is out the door.

brettermeier 39 minutes ago | parent

And you are an inactivist, doing nothing all day?

ThrowawayTestr 22 minutes ago | parent

Because as long as it's "activism" you can do no wrong?

brettermeier 13 minutes ago | parent

Who said that

vanuatu 42 minutes ago | parent

surprised that this map does not include the largest 3-5 platforms

Most data annotation comes from educated Western countries atp (the $2 meme is kind of old now since the industry has moved onto RL envs) where the annotators routinely earn multiple times the local median wage.

nekusar 39 minutes ago | parent

Everybody who works for money is exploited. Not if theyre exploited, but how much.

And yeah, humans are being bought per hour to do AI training. Ok. Are they at least paid decently? Of course not! The surplus (work's worth - wages) is always captured by the Capitalist class.

Do they have to look at horrible content? Yeah. Part of the job and the danger when dealing with use-uploaded content. Is the problem just the horrible content, or is it about pay?

Also, this is regarding US AI companies according to the map. How are the Chinese doing their LLM training? Internally? Global South as well? Wherever they're doing it, is their pay better? Cause this map doesnt have anything regarding China... Or the EU either.

neuroticnews25 30 minutes ago | parent

I'm not being exploited any more than I'm exploiting my employer, that's a toxic way to look at voluntary interactions of people doing their best to escape suffering and death.

dogleash 15 minutes ago | parent

I think the fact we take the temperature of the market and label it as a "strong" or "weak labor force" is a counterfactual to the idea there's equivalent exploitation.

It's mutually beneficial (otherwise one party or the other would terminate the contract), but that a wide window for the balance of benefits to shift.

briandw 14 minutes ago | parent

Have you ever looked at the living standards in communist countries? Do you really expect that communism will improve anything for anyone other than the party bosses?

Frieren 33 minutes ago | parent

> People don't even know about their fellow co-workers.

This is very important. To isolate workers to make them powerless gives even more power to companies that are already very powerful.

It also makes to work in this industries more isolating and will cause more mental health issues. This should be illegal, and probably is, and should be investigated and punished by goverments.

webdoodle 15 minutes ago | parent

As the author suspects: "That makes unionizing or anything like that just kind of impossible. "

It's preemptive union busting.

danans 23 minutes ago | parent

It's interesting that in Europe the customer and the labor appear to be relatively colocated. Any theories as to why?

RugnirViking 8 minutes ago | parent

is that true? from looking at the map it seems there are workers and customers in europe, but usually these are separate? most europe workers working for US based entities, and most customers buying from different US entities