A look at the vast and mostly hidden “tasker” underclass, including subject-matter experts, hired by companies like Scale AI to annotate data for AI training
As the technology becomes ubiquitous, a vast tasker underclass is emerging — and not going anywhere. Bluesky: @sarahjeong.bsky.social , @knguyen.bsky.social , and @yoyoel.com Mastodon: @stshank@mstdn.social , @alastairmrushworth … , and @mhoye@mastodon.social Twitter: @jwherrman , @saedelstein , @joshdzieza , @chrisgayomali , @caseyjohnston , @niamh_mcintyre , @beneltham , @cfarivar , @joshdzieza , @bernstein , @lil_mermaid , @nostalgiatrap , @gvsmith , and @dylanmatt . Forums: r/artificial . Thanks: @ants000 Bluesky: Sarah Jeong / @sarahjeong.bsky.social : one of the things I love about josh dzieza's work is how unassumingly intellectual it is: a casual reference to david graeber, a funny aside about ontology of AI annotation https://www.theverge.com/... Kevin Nguyen / @knguyen.bsky.social : Our most ambitious AI reporting to date—a deep dive on the millions of human beings that make AI seem sorta human https://www.theverge.com/... Yoel Roth / @yoyoel.com : I have so many favorite parts of this piece, but my FAVORITE favorite is when the data labeling vendor's fraud detection systems ban the reporter for misrepresenting his location. Mastodon: Stephen Shankland / @stshank@mstdn.social : Life in the trenches labeling AI data. https://www.theverge.com/... Alastair Rushworth / @alastairmrushworth@fosstodon.org : How the AI sausage is made: lots of humans on not much pay. Great reporting. https://www.theverge.com/... @mhoye@mastodon.social : Once again: what comfortable people are calling “artificial intelligence” or “machine learning” is just “repurposed labor from underpaid people in the global south”. — https://www.theverge.com/... And - once again - we're using a thin veneer of software to hide extractive-resource colonialism. Twitter: John Herrman / @jwherrman : this story should sit at the foundation of every conversation about ai https://twitter.com/... Stephen Edelstein / @saedelstein : Pay no attention to the underpaid human human workers behind the curtain. https://twitter.com/... Josh Dzieza / @joshdzieza : Annotation is strange work, and it's gotten harder as AI has improved. (I failed repeatedly at it.) You need to read extraordinarily complex instructions and follow strict rules, but the rules are counterintuitive and alien. https://www.theverge.com/... [image] Chris Gayomali / @chrisgayomali : “For Joe's students, it was work stripped of all its normal trappings: a schedule, colleagues, knowledge of what they were working on or whom they were working for. In fact, they rarely called it work at all — just ‘tasking.’ They were taskers.” https://nymag.com/... Casey Johnston / @caseyjohnston : A big round of applause to the king @joshdzieza for this one https://nymag.com/... Niamh McIntyre / @niamh_mcintyre : Enjoyed this long-read on the precarious workers powering the AI boom, + this insight on the sisyphean effort to build models that function without manual labour https://www.theverge.com/... [image] Ben Eltham / @beneltham : AI is just a big factory of low-paid humans with a shiny API on top https://www.theverge.com/... via @Verge @cfarivar : “...it looks more familiar, the latest iteration of a particularly Silicon Valley division of labor, in which the futuristic gleam of new technologies hides a sprawling manufacturing apparatus and the people who make it run.” https://nymag.com/... Josh Dzieza / @joshdzieza : Behind every AI system is a vast and usually hidden workforce of data annotators: people labeling images, fact-checking chatbots, and writing examples of code. https://nymag.com/... [image] Joe Bernstein / @bernstein : “When AI comes for your job, you may not lose it, but it might become more alien, more isolating, more tedious.” https://nymag.com/... Lily / @lil_mermaid : really grim article overall but found myself really touched reading this that no matter how much they try to atomize and isolate workers we always manage to find and help each other ❤️ https://nymag.com/... [image] @nostalgiatrap : AI and labor: turn out the whole AI machine is run by people in other countries sitting at a desk coding and labeling for 10 hours a day making a dollar an hour https://nymag.com/... Genevieve Smith / @gvsmith : The question I keep asking myself is why we keep knowingly creating a world no one would want to live in. @joshdzieza on the millions of AI laborers sorting knees from elbows and harmful chats from helpful chats all day. https://nymag.com/... Dylan Matthews / @dylanmatt : Really good piece on where the HF part of RLHF comes from https://nymag.com/... Forums: r/artificial : AI Is a Lot of Work Thanks: @ants000