After graduating from the University of California, Dylan Baker was hired by Google. It was a classic career path of a young software engineer who wanted to pay student loans. He joined Tech Powerhouse in 2017 and joined the machine learning (ML), a technology that allows artificial intelligence (AI) devices to “learn” in data without accurate guidance.
To do this, ML uses what is known as “labeled data.” Information with a description of meaning or content. For example, the image of a cat can be displayed as a video of a person who has a description of the position of the ear and snout or the content or feelings they say.
Dylan and his colleagues use this bite -sized data mass to supply AI systems. “At that point of my career, I didn’t know that the labeling data was a job in itself. “We got so -called labeled data, but who was labeling? We didn’t ask questions. ” During his study, a young engineer discovered the reality of the working conditions of those who marked his data.
AI trainer without rights
Some of these people, known as AI trainers, are hired in large centers in a country with cheap labor. But many people work on platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk or Clickworker.
When it spreads in the four corners of the world, these workers do what they are known as “click work.” Small -scale standardized that skill is required. Companies and other organizations send these tasks to the platform.
By 2022, Baker’s “cognitive discord” (as he said) has been too much between his values and his work. He was concerned about AI’s prejudice and working conditions for those who generated data, but they were ignored by his boss. So he left Google and joined the Dair (Dair (Dair) (Dair) founded by Timnit Gebru, an engineer and researcher of AI ethics. Baker, now 28, is campaigning for better working conditions for those who study and train ethical AI.
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Dylan Baker was invited to participate in the discussion at the European Parliament on November 21, 2024, and hosted by France MEP Leïla Chaibi (Gue/NGL, Left). “I am here to provide an engineer’s point of view, but most of all, I listen to workers and workers.”
Venezuela, penny for jobs from Syria to the United States and Spain
Sitting next to her, her face is one of the workers, hidden with lavender tips. In Spanish, 34 -year -old Venezuela explains her job for the past decade. She works with several platforms, but she is tied to a confidential maintenance contract, so only one name can be named.
These are the only things she has signed with some companies. Fuentes work without a contract and pay at work. She participated in the business to earn some income when she studied in college. At the time, she tried to join Venezuela’s national petroleum company, but inflation has already made local calls. The platform paid her in the US dollar. She only took a few cents per job, but explained, “It’s still better to live than Venezuela’s minimum wage.” She eventually made “100%” living in this activity. Received from the cancer market using a basic laptop, a model provided by the government, she spends a day to switch between five platforms.
In 2019, inflation, power cuts and interruption of the Internet have become impossible to live in Venezuela. Oscarina took a bus to Colombia. Just a few months after she arrived, she was sick. She was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, which destroyed her until you could not work on a normal day. She had no choice to continue to live in the platform’s work.
When she always trained AIS, Oskarina learned how to do everything. In general, she checks the output of the algorithm (e.g. Google search results), scores, updates the company or a person’s data, or decides the age parentheses for the video. In the last few years, jobs have become rarely rarely.
‘If there is no persistent human input, the AI model will eventually destroy self-destruction’ -Dylan baker, Ethical AI researcher
To keep getting a decent income, she must continue to join another platform. “All Windows is open at the same time on a small screen on the computer. It’s a bit difficult for your eyes, but there’s no choice. You need to make enough money to pay for rent and bills. ” In general, the work unit is paid from $ 0.01 to $ 0.05. There are almost no tasks, far away, and the Labor Party is large, so this young woman does not actually break down. “Sometimes get up at 3 am to create a few cents.”
Big Tech has made this microwave oven invisible. We work alone without income security and compete with each other for simple tasks. There is no job security without a contract. If you think that the company is not well performed, you may refuse to work. In this case, even if the customer needs to maintain the specified data, the worker is not paid. The result is a loss of profits and waste of valuable time. Often influenced workers do not even know why their work was rejected.
Yasser Al Rayes attends the event held in Syria remotely in the European Parliament. After that, a big window can be seen in the Damascus building. He is a young graduate of computer science and AI. “We have no stable internet connections, electric cuts (repeats), and it is expensive to work in a good bandwidth,” he explains. “But the customer of the platform has sometimes set a high standard for how to do it.” In the middle of the work, the worker may be rejected if the connection is broken. “If you are kicked out of the platform or even too often, this young Syrian complains.
In a documentary about his daily life for Data Worker inquiry Project, Yasser tells the time it takes to understand the guidance of the work. “I have completed all the work all day and all have been verified by the supervisor. And you can see that the customer rejected them all. You have to start again. ” 10 hours of nothing.
In order to fight against such abuse and to give advice on ambiguous work guidelines, the microwave people thought they had no choice but to organize the organization.
Krystal Kauffmann lives in the United States. Like Oskarina Fuentes, she started working on the platform when she escaped her existing employment due to chronic diseases. “This was before the infectious disease in 2015, and there was no remote work in my area.” “So I started working at home and found Amazon mechanical turk,” she recalls.
She worked alone behind the screens for years, and she took the control of Turkopticon, an organization created by an operator on the microcing platform. There she found a brilliant inequality between herself and her colleagues.
Turkopticon started with a simple forum to review jobs and customers. Today, it gathers people around the world into different discussion channels and advocates their rights. “In the ideal world, data workers will be recognized as their own experts. They will be able to access the same amount of work, equal wages, and psychological support. ”Kauffmann claims.
“Creating AI will always need humans.”
Leïla Chaibi explained, “We are at the point of tipping: the European Union is looking for a way to control AI and AI work.” “These workers, upstream of the algorithm, say that it should be an absolute priority. An electronic ship that is invisible behind the phone and laptop was overlooked in European discussions on AI regulations.
Nacho Barros, Spain, recalls the first stage on the platform during the 2020 lock period. I liked jobs. But I always realized that I would like to choose my work, join the platform, and not deserve other tasks. ” Because I was so nervous as a career, Barros went back to work in the hotel industry. But he is still involved in campaigns for regulation of clicking work. If there was a protective framework and a “good wage,” he emphasized. Then Nacho could easily see him returning to work as a full time.
Krystal Kauffman said, “Creating AI always requires humans. Language is constantly changing. Dylan Baker agrees: “In terms of the platform, AI is a well -created marketing strategy in some of the platforms that AI claims no longer human need. But it is absolutely not executed. Without a certain human input, the AI model will eventually destroy self. ”
