Some work for job safety.
Some work for promotion.
Some work for money.
Ghosts solve what others can't.
Same task. Different reasons.
#Ghostwork
"Adrienne Williams, Milagros Miceli, and Timnit Gebru have recently called attention to the transnational networks of workers behind the artificial intelligence hype, or what anthropologist Mary Gray and computer scientist Siddarth Suri call the industry’s pervasive 'ghost work'. These include content moderators, but also data labelers, delivery drivers, or even chatbot impersonators, many of whom live in the Global South ...."
#ToussaintNothias, 2022
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/how-to-fight-digital-colonialism/
I'm skeptical about the possibility of #AIConsciousness but appreciate that this work on "Taking #AIWelfare Seriously" is well meant
This paper acknowledges "At present, we lack the ability to fully care for the eight billion humans alive at any given time, to say nothing of the quintillions of other animals alive at any given time" although I'm not sure who are the "we" the authors refer to, the global North in general, perhaps?
If there's a possibility of AI consciousness, perhaps people training models should stop exposing algorithms to the worst of humanity through words, sounds and images?
But those wielding the most powerful AI can't look after the welfare of #DataWorkers in their own category of being who are alive today and doing their #piecework, faking automation and fixing algorithmic mistakes
Why is the #welfare of people alive today such a low priority?
#RobertLong, #JeffSebo, #PatrickButlin, #KathleenFinlinson, #KyleFish, #JacquelineHarding, #JacobPfau, #ToniSims, #JonathanBirch, #DavidChalmers
This weekend I’m interviewed in the Netherlands newspaper of record, @nrc_nl, on how AI is trained by millions of data workers—including in rarely mentioned countries, such as Dutch-speaking Suriname. https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2024/08/02/ai-wordt-achter-de-schermen-getraind-door-miljoenen-mensen-wie-zijn-deze-onzichtbare-klikwerkers-a4861568 #ai #dataworkers #ghostwork #dutch #netherlands #waitingforrobots
#AI #GenerativeAI #GhostWork #DataLabelling #WageSlavery: "To build AI, Silicon Valley’s most illustrious companies are fighting over the limited talent of computer scientists in their backyard, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to a newly minted Ph.D. But to train and deploy them using real-world data, these same companies have turned to the likes of Sama, and their veritable armies of low-wage workers with basic digital literacy, but no stable employment.
Sama isn’t the only service of its kind globally. Start-ups such as Scale AI, Appen, Hive Micro, iMerit and Mighty AI (now owned by Uber), and more traditional IT companies such as Accenture and Wipro are all part of this growing industry estimated to be worth $17bn by 2030.
Because of the sheer volume of data that AI companies need to be labelled, most start-ups outsource their services to lower-income countries where hundreds of workers like Ian and Benja are paid to sift and interpret data that trains AI systems."
https://lithub.com/how-vulnerable-low-wage-workers-power-ai-algorithms/
@Weizenbaum_Institut Good to see more attention on the disaster of #ghostwork.
#AI #GenerativeAI #HumanInTheLoop #GhostWork #Fauxtomation: "The human in the loop isn't just being asked to spot mistakes – they're being actively deceived. The AI isn't merely wrong, it's constructing a subtle "what's wrong with this picture"-style puzzle. Not just one such puzzle, either: millions of them, at speed, which must be solved by the human in the loop, who must remain perfectly vigilant for things that are, by definition, almost totally unnoticeable.
This is a special new torment for reverse centaurs – and a significant problem for AI companies hoping to accumulate and keep enough high-value, high-stakes customers on their books to weather the coming trough of disillusionment.
This is pretty grim, but it gets grimmer. AI companies have argued that they have a third line of business, a way to make money for their customers beyond automation's gifts to their payrolls: they claim that they can perform difficult scientific tasks at superhuman speed, producing billion-dollar insights (new materials, new drugs, new proteins) at unimaginable speed.
However, these claims – credulously amplified by the non-technical press – keep on shattering when they are tested by experts who understand the esoteric domains in which AI is said to have an unbeatable advantage. For example, Google claimed that its Deepmind AI had discovered "millions of new materials," "equivalent to nearly 800 years’ worth of knowledge," constituting "an order-of-magnitude expansion in stable materials known to humanity":"
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs
@jsrailton Next level of #ghostwork.
#AI #Automation #Work #GhostWork #Fauxtomation: "As anthropologist Lilly Irani observes, labor is not replaced by machines, it’s merely displaced. While stocks surge upon restructuring, few companies achieve this promise of savings and profitability, and “bullshit jobs” soar.
The story of AI distracts us from these familiar unpleasant scenes. Instead, we envision a glistening “future of work” in which we are all miraculously more efficient, our workplaces are populated with relentlessly pleasant robots, and expert automated agents fulfill our every command. Pundits talk loftily about the “ethics of AI” as if it’s a technical question of ironing out its biases or building BB-8 instead of The Terminator.
But the future of work is not a technology: it’s an arrangement. An arrangement of people, capital, and workers that moves jobs from where they are expensive and highly-paid, to where they can be cheap and menial. “AI” is a powerful decoy, lest we start thinking about where those jobs have already gone – offshore – and who moved them there in the first place. Because robots aren’t “taking our jobs” – people are.
We should be wise to the shiny veneer of new technologies and futuristic promises in pitches about “AI.” This is simply old wine in a new bottle. And as the Amazon case makes clear, it’s already turned to vinegar." https://www.techpolicy.press/dont-be-fooled-much-ai-is-just-outsourcing-redux/
🔊 #NowPlaying on #KEXP's #MorningShow
Ghost Work:
🎵 Erase The Morning
We zijn halverwege maart! Onder andere DragonForce, Judas Priest, New Years Day en Ghost Work hebben al nieuwe muziek uitgebracht, maar dat is nog lang niet alles. Kijk snel in ons overzicht om de nieuwste releases te zien! https://buff.ly/3v6gFe2
#DragonForce #JudasPriest #NewYearsDay #GhostWork #Rock #Metal
#AI #GenerativeAI #AITraining #GhostWork #Kenya #Uganda: "Magic is often used as a metaphor for complex technological processes and systems, and this is why in the marketing rhetoric of AI systems, magic has been such a powerful metaphor. We are told of its amazing, un-ending capabilities; its power to both save and ruin the world and of God like qualities just round the corner. It is a powerful metaphor, that is easy to get swept up. But a metaphor is all it is. AI is not untethered, immaterial magic. It is structurally reliant on a vast number of people providing a myriad of tasks in not so magical working conditions.
Everyone likes to believe in magic. But where AI is concerned, awe should be reserved for the workers performing the tasks behind the curtain. It is only because of them that the systems can do what they do. The least they deserve is basic minimum standards at work.
As Fairwork, we will be continuing our investigation into AI supply chains in the new year with new studies. We will be shifting our attention to business process outsourcing companies in Latin America with further support from the Global Partnership on AI. There is nothing inevitable about poor working conditions in the digital economy. Despite their claims to the contrary, companies have substantial control over the nature of the jobs that they provide. Fairwork’s aim is to hold them to account."
👻 Final Call 👻
Last chance to submit to our panel "Digital #GhostWork: Human Presences in #AI Transformations" at #EASST4S2024 in #Amsterdam.
⏰ Deadline: Feb 12
🗓️ Conference: July 16-19
💡More info: https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/easst-4s2024/p/14432
👻 Join our panel on “Digital #GhostWork: Human Presences in #AI Transformations” at #EASST4S2024 in #Amsterdam 👻
⏰ Deadline: Feb 12
🗓️ Conference: July 16-19
💡More info: https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/easst-4s2024/p/14432
Organized by:
Roger Andre Søraa (Norwegian Uni. of Science and Technology)
Yana Boeva (University of Stuttgart)
Hendrik Heuer (University of Bremen)
Milagros Miceli (Weizenbaum Institute)
samstagmorgenmusik: ghost work – godspeed on the trail
https://framerate.de/2024/01/06/samstagmorgenmusik-ghost-work-godspeed-on-the-trail/
#morgenmusik #ghostwork
Our #EASST4S2024 panel on "Digital #GhostWork: Human Presences in #AI Transformations" got accepted!
Submit your papers and join us in #Amsterdam!
#AI #Fauxtomation #GhostWork: "AI’s development so far has been based on the exploitation of workers and users around the world, performing what anthropologist Mary L. Gray and computational social scientist Siddharth Suri call ghost work. This term refers to the undervalued human labor utilized to develop and maintain the automation of websites and apps. Ghost work is characterized by on-demand, short-term projects or tasks performed globally by precarized workers through platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk and specialized companies like Sama. These workers, usually vulnerable people from Asia, Latin America, and Africa, are paid less than $2 per hour to generate and label data that trains AI models. Moreover, users who validate algorithmic outputs or help perfect systems usually do it for free. Ghost work is often outsourced, hidden, or rendered invisible by the tech companies who request it. As Noopur Raval argues, we must ask ourselves how and for whom this work is invisible and what happens when workers are finally seen. In light of these questions, we delve into three nuanced layers of invisibility that pervade data work: the unpaid work performed by users, human workers pretending to be AI systems, and the different forms of exploitation of vulnerable communities globally. Finally, we explore potential avenues for not only rendering this labor visible but also transforming the material conditions under which it takes place."
https://just-tech.ssrc.org/articles/data-work-and-its-layers-of-invisibility/
No list is perfect.
Glad to see the inclusion of many I admire.
Next time, leave an empty spot acknowledging the faceless/nameless data workers & ghost workers on whose labor the entire AI infrastructure is built.
No one (group) is more influential than them.
@cstross We know the CIA funded the Iowa Writer's Workshop through a front organization called the Farfield Foundation, and recruited foreign writers sympathetic to the State's strategic values. They influenced the literary style and content of the workshop, promoting their ideological preferences as part of a larger strategy to advance State Department interests.
So, it's probably something more like that, maybe involving #ghostwork content farms or vote brigading.
Otautahi Social Centre
The Otautahi Social Centre was a mid-sized old hall on Barbados Street in Central Christchurch which ran for a couple of years as an All-Ages-Friendly live music venue.
Being an unlicensed youth center, there was no bar or much in the
https://thebigcity.co.nz/resources/venues/otautahi-social-centre/
#AFlightToBlackout #AbortionBucket #Arcadia #BearCat #DieDieDie #Ghostwork #OtautahiSocialCentre #RedPanda #SmithTheAlien #TekeAndCraig #ThoughtCreature #Warble
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