Employees describe the psychological trauma of reading and viewing graphic content, low pay and abrupt dismissals
Employees say they weren’t adequately warned about the brutality of some of the text and images they would be tasked with reviewing, and were offered no or inadequate psychological support. Workers were paid between $1.46 and $3.74 an hour, according to a Sama spokesperson.
Cool. Using slave labor to train tools to strip the best parts of humanity away from us so that AI can do creative activities like poetry and art while we're more and more stuck in a gig economy.
Let me stop you right there. The current concept of "AI"--otherwise known as Large Language Models because that is really what people are referring to--is not capable of creativity. ChatGPT and things like it just regurgitate stuff they find. They can't create something new and original
It creates things. Whether it is truly “creative” in the sense that humans are “creative”, doesn’t really matter. Now, you might respond by saying that it only regurgitates, but I would argue that many if not all human creative outputs are, at least to some degree, “regurgitations” in the same sense. I am not disregarding art, just saying that art is always derivative to some degree.
It doesn't really matter though. It will take away jobs from people in creative industries that only creative people were able to do before. The end result is basically the same.
So then blame the real problem, which is not new and has always been the main enemy: capitalism and its demand for seeking profits despite any consequences.
That has nothing to do with "AI" and still doesn't have anything to do with the original claim of whether or not the new wave of LLMs are capable of creativity.
I am. That's the thing that I'm blaming. The claim I was making was that OpenAI has engaged in violent colonialism inherent to capitalism with the goal of making Elon rich, and the rest of us poor.
The difference between what a human mind does in transforming their nature and experiences through artistic expression and what the machine does by referencing values and expressing them in human language without any kind of understanding is very different. You are right that LLMs don't literally copy word for word what they find, and they certainly are sophisticated pieces of technology, but what they are expressing is more processed language or images than an act of artistic creation. Less culinary experience and more industrial sausage. They do not have intelligence and are incapable of producing art of any kind. This isn't to say they aren't a threat to commodified art in the marketplace because they very much are, but in terms of enrichment or even entertainment the machine is not capable of producing anything worthwhile unless the viewer is looking for something they don't have to look at for more than a moment or read with any serious interest of the contents. I'm interested in people using LLMs as a tool in their own artistic pursuits, but they have their own limitations as any tool does.
A step closer to approximating the intelligence of a worm, perhaps. I once looked into where the line is on which anamalia were capable of operant conditioning, which I hypothesize may be the first purpose of a brain, and the line on our present taxonomic hierarchy is among worms (jellyfish do not have sufficient faculties for operant conditioning and are on the other side of the line). Sensory input being associated with decider values is still not as sophisticated as learning to be attracted to beneficial things and avoiding dangerous things because the machine does not have needs or desires to base its reactions on which would have to be trained into it by those with intelligence. I'm not saying it's impossible to artificially create a being like this, but in my estimation we are very far from it considering that we barely grasp how any brain works other than to be aware of their extreme complexity. Considering the degree of difference between a worm and a sentient human, we are much further from what we would consider a human level of intelligence.
Edit: Re-reading this it seems much more snippy than I intended and I'm not sure how to frame it to sound more neutral. I meant this as a neutral continuation of a discussion of an idea.
Yes, I use the tools every day and understand how they work. Failing to fully explain the mechanics of LLMs does not materially change the meaning of my original statement.
There's a reason that fan fiction is not regarded as true creative art that should be respected and discussed like other mediums: it;s not trying to do something new and original, the whole point is to re-combine and shuffle things around to sound and feel and look like the original work, just more, but not different in any real enough way to matter.
It is true that LLMs and DPMs do not create, they interpolate -- that's why training data and curation of that data is so critical to begin with. Nevertheless, it is correct to say they are being used for "creative activities" as cheap and (in my opinion) unsustainable substitutes for human minds.
AI is about at creative as Adobe Photoshop is, or a pencil for that matter. A human operating it (no, not txt2img prompting) is where the creativity comes from.
Starvation wages are slavery. And yes. Our techocolonial society engages at it at many levels. No. We should not be okay with it. We should do what we can do disengage from businesses that engage in it, and we should be self forgiving of ourselves when we can't. We should always be advocating for the workers, even if sometimes that means who we're advocating for is us
Cheap labour isn’t the same as slavery... it’s still just a job employees can leave...
You're gonna get a lot of flak for that take, even though I agree with most of the rest of your post. Let's reframe the problem: you're currently paid a low wage. It's barely enough to pay for food, rent, and getting to and from your job.
You want to leave that job for one you know pays better, but it's farther away. Even if you get the job and have the better income, you would be spending the net gains on the extra costs of commuting: it ends up being a wash.
You would move closer, but because your current wage doesn't allow you to save money, you can't afford the costs of moving, let alone a down payment on a house or a deposit on an apartment.
You would get better educated so you qualify for better paying jobs, but again, you have no savings from your current job to pay for schooling, and you have no/bad credit to afford a student loan.
All the problems arrayed against you require money to solve, and because you're "cheap labor" you're never able to gather enough money to solve them. You're forcibly stuck with your current job. They pay you, yes, but you can't leave. You're "free" to leave, but that's just saying you're free to lose your home and starve. Now none of these problems are unique to Kenya, I could be describing any country with poor Economic Mobility, I could be describing any job or industry. Globalization was important for many reasons, but it has allowed companies to identify the parts of the world where labor is cheapest and pay them... exactly what they're "worth."
Whether or not we call it slavery, it is for sure a gross exploitation of labour. The article reminds us that we in the so-called 'western world' can only afford their luxury life because there's someone elsewhere who pays the price.
People elsewhere pay the price, but it's not in any way necessary for Western quality of life, because all it "affords" us is massive wealth inequality in our own countries, which leads to other problems like rising housing costs and severely skewed influence in politics.
Cut down on stupidly high profits for a very small group of people, by not stealing labor, and huge sections of people in other countries can have decent pay and work conditions.
They can leave the job but they will still carry the psychological scars from it. They were not receiving adequate mental health support for the severity of the content they had to deal with.
You comment inspired this thought: The older I get, the less I have faith in psychological support making us whole. I still think it should be part of work like this but the damage can be as permanent as losing a limb. What is that worth in money? (hypothetical)
That's definitely something to consider. Psychological support helps people with coping but it doesn't remove the trauma. Anyone willing to do this sort of work deserves to be very well compensated.
But all that said, it isn't even unique to AI that there is a need for people to sift through the worst stuff imaginable to prevent everyone else from being exposed. All user-generated internet content has that problem.
Only rich people can afford new clothes every month, and if you think computer makers are passing on the savings of their exploitative practices to their customers, I've got a bridge to sell you.
But that's exactly what's happening. Bloodsucking capitalists have decided that AI is a cheaper option than paying people a living wage, so creatives are losing their jobs.
Instead of actually learning how to create art, shitbag grifters claim theyre "taking the power back from creatives" and doing nothing but stealing from actual creatives to make some sort of soulless synthesis, leaving actual creatives high and dry. For just one example, look at how many publishing outlets have stopped taking submissions because of the overwhelming flood of AI spam.
All the while people are out here trying to make ends meet and are being forced into shitty, low paid jobs or gig work
I think he/she was referring to the sole purpose of AI being developed is to create an additional subscription model that serves both ads and bullshit, locked to infrastructure of google or metas choice.
Your complaint here is entirely with capitalism and has nothing to do with AI. It's a legitimate concern, but it;s fart larger problem than new ways of making pictures. Aim your opprobrium at the correct targets
Learn how to actually be a creative person. "Prompt engineering" IS NOT CREATIVITY. Fucking period. You want to paint? Paint. You want to write? Write. You want to draw? Draw. Feeding bullshit into a synthesis machine IS NOT CREATIVITY.
Fuck off with your AI apologia. AI bullshit IS NOT ART
You want to learn to argue? Be willing to learn. It's clear you know jack shit about the subject. For the record my entire family, including me, are artists of one sort or another, I also actually understand what ai generative models are and can do, unlike you.
Oh, and have a good hard look at anti-ai arguments. You'll find they all come from either a complete failure to understand the subject or from the failings of capitalism, never from the technology itself.
There's nothing to elaborate on. It's a stupid position put about by luddites and perpetuated by people with no understanding of the subject. It's so not on target it's not even wrong!
The way AI advertisers constantly call others not on board Luddites reminds me of what somebody said on badly written magic systems in fiction. It was something like they focus more on making the most complex system rather than actually asking if it will add to the story. Then when the story fails to reach an audience these authors confuse the apathy with real life anti-intellectualism.
I'm a DevOps engineer. I work with big technology every day. I am very definitively not a Luddite. But the way the capitalists controlling our economy view and want to use AI is harmful to us, the lower and middle classes. I'm not sure which part of my view is so stupid that it enters into psuedoscience, leading me to not even being wrong
I'm not demonizing AI. I'm demonizing OpenAI, the shitty company. I'm demonizing CEOs and publishing executives who think they can pass off an inferior product vomited out by a robot record scratching the entire history of human creativity while we get stuck doing bullshit jobs for Uber, DoorDash, Fiverr, and the rest.
You think I have a position on AI that I don't and it's exhausting repetitively explaining to you that I don't think AI is the problem, I think capitalism is. What part of what I am saying is not clear? Why do you want to treat me like a moron luddite for something I don't believe and didn't say? I'm more and more getting the impression that you and I are on the same page about this but you're inserting a position onto me I do not hold.
That's why I said this is exhausting. In fact you're exhausting. In fact, I feel like I'm being a jerk and I'm starting to think you're a jerk
You're right, I'm not up for having this fucking discussion AGAIN! It's not performative snark it;s frustration at idiots recycling idiotic comments to support idiotic positions hating on some very interesting technology, and on the off chance there is a real grip they're blaming the wrong thing.
Give me an argument worth engaging with and maybe I'll engage in good faith. That has not happened here
again
Do you understand the distinction I'm making here?
@ReCursing, @Cube6392, @acastcandream - I think there is discussion to be had here, but it's clear to me that folks are getting a bit too heated to be kind to one another. I completely understand, this is a topic that is complicated and that lots of folks are passionate about. I think it is probably time for everyone involved to disengage from the discussion and cool off. If you have questions or concerns, please direct them to me via DM.
But you're not doing that. You're assigning a position I don't believe and then treating multiple people rudely on that basis. When people say you're being rude, you double down, and call me an idiot again.
You do not understand the distinction that's being made.
And here I must be crazy thinking if it is US company paying them, maybe they deserve the equivalent of US employees, no matter what the fucking local pay is.
That "local pay" bullshit is just an excuse to exploit. Pay them what you would have to pay a US citizen for the same job or fuck right off. They don't deserve less because of geographic location.