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.

  • AJ Young@beehaw.org
    2·
    1 year ago

    To be honest, this isn’t an AI problem, but a content moderation and labor force ethics problem. You can swap out AI with social media and you’ll find the same amount of psychological harm to moderators.

      • AJ Young@beehaw.org
        0·
        1 year ago

        Good question! It’s probably the most psychologically damaging job out there.

        Ironically, maybe with AI? But that would mean we would have to train a model to recognize the worst images and videos possible…which means gathering all of that data…which means whomever trains that model will be scarred…actually, maybe not a good idea…

  • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.org
    1·
    1 year ago

    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.

    Cool cool cool cool.

    • QHC@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      so that AI can do creative activities

      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

      • tombuben@beehaw.org
        2·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • HarkMahlberg@kbin.social
        0·
        1 year ago

        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.”

      • 0x815@feddit.deOP
        0·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.org
        0·
        1 year ago

        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

    • ReCursing@kbin.social
      0·
      1 year ago

      tools to strip the best parts of humanity away from us so that AI can do creative activities like poetry and art

      Yeah that’s a bullshit take on AI