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.
> 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.
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.
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
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?
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).
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.
> 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.
Wrong framing. I'm saying that any trade between a colonizer nation and a colonized nation is undeniably made different by the lasting effects of colonialism. There are mitigations for this that many academics have advocated for, but they all require the developed world to cede money and power to the undeveloped one, which historically hasn't been a great pitch. But until it's done, you can't divorce these things from one another and no international trade can be truly, squeaky clean.
It's also worth noting that so, so, so much of our trade right now is anything but. Exporting ships for wrecking in India, the entire fast-fashion industry, chocolate, coffee, lithium mining, so many industries are absolutely hip-deep in the abusive nature of colonialism. Data labeling/moderation are just the most recent iterations of the same shameful tradition.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
It doesn’t have to be black and white though. Consider the alternative where in addition to the $2/hr pay, the people are provided with support and training to also help reduce the adverse effects of sitting in front of such content. Wouldn’t that or other ways to mitigate the effects be better?
I am not saying it isn’t done today. Just that we should consider that as an option when coming from either side of this debate.
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.
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.
I don't see how your reply connects with what the parent said. But to your point, I don't think anyone in this conversation specifically claimed anything about workers of the third world needing to be prevented from taking these jobs, but rather how they're universally harmful to the human mind.
This could imply banning the industry, but since most agree it's necessary, most would probably be in favor of psychological counciling and greater pay for these workers.
The point is we're subjecting desperate people to trauma before limited to first responders, police, and military, while providing them none of the pay, job security, or counciling of these above specialities.
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.
I think you need to pause and consider how significant the mind is in the body. I've lived in my car before and I will take that over consistent psychological distress of something like that. I don't think that's universal but I really think viewing awful images and text all the time would fuck me up.
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.
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.
It's in the interest of your employer to get the greatest amount of value for the smallest wage. That's not a moral statement about your particular employer, that's just a rational actor model of economics. In turn it's in your interest to expand least labor for the greatest pay. The asymmetry is your employer is an institution that can put incalculable resources into imposing its utility on you, from union busting and productivity spyware to lobbying national policy and conspiring to tilt the labor market... An employer can go months without significant fractions of employees, they can hire an entire hidden backup department in case of a strike, but you'll probably quickly starve without ongoing employment.
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.
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?
All fun and games until it’s the value of your labor that AI is impacting. What terms will you come up with that signals to your peers that you’re part of the in-group? Probably something very masculine and edgy to show that you should be taken very seriously, but in a very cool way. Maybe something like “knowledge economy arbitrage”.
It’s worth talking about. There is probably a very fine line between standard outsourcing and some form of colonialism. To me Chinese companies building ports in African countries where they bring in their own workers and then set up situations where the home country defaults and the port defaults to China is definitely some form of colonialism.
I'm a person who believes an activist has already decided the conclusion and just finds whatever facts they need to fit their narrative. They also use BS terms like AI colonialism and other nonsensical meaningless words to manipulate people emotionally.
So yes I think this is claptrap of the first order that exists so people can pretend it's of any value to reaffirm their echo chamber.
"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." -- And you see nothing about that seems like it could possibly be a way to describe the current AI landscape? Perhaps you jumping ship because you see a buzzword, or something you have decided is a buzzword is just you being mentally lazy?
No because I'm not captured ideologically. You can run open source models (which are ever improving) and there is no moat for AI neither in software or hardware. Look at yourself in the mirror and tell me it's not the pot calling the kettle black.
Colonialism is so overused as a term it's pointless. By this logic China is doing Electric car colonialism and Bangladesh apparel colonialism.
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.
It's preemptive union busting.
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.
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.
It's also worth noting that so, so, so much of our trade right now is anything but. Exporting ships for wrecking in India, the entire fast-fashion industry, chocolate, coffee, lithium mining, so many industries are absolutely hip-deep in the abusive nature of colonialism. Data labeling/moderation are just the most recent iterations of the same shameful tradition.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
I am not saying it isn’t done today. Just that we should consider that as an option when coming from either side of this debate.
This could imply banning the industry, but since most agree it's necessary, most would probably be in favor of psychological counciling and greater pay for these workers.
The point is we're subjecting desperate people to trauma before limited to first responders, police, and military, while providing them none of the pay, job security, or counciling of these above specialities.
[0]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti0o4RhOtjQ
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.
"Voluntary" is not a word I would use to describe any agreement where one side is choosing between the deal and physical danger or potential death.
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.
Call it "colonialism" if you want but it screams "fake moralism"
So yes I think this is claptrap of the first order that exists so people can pretend it's of any value to reaffirm their echo chamber.
Colonialism is so overused as a term it's pointless. By this logic China is doing Electric car colonialism and Bangladesh apparel colonialism.