I didn't know this - am I the only one?

It's true, and it's a side of AI development that often gets overlooked. I've come across similar discussions, and it's surprising how little attention is given to the conditions of the workers behind the scenes. These labeling tasks are essential for training AI, yet the pay and treatment can be far from fair. It's a reminder of how much work goes into building systems we often take for granted. Hopefully, more awareness will lead to better conditions for these workers in the future.

It does not surprise me at all. Mechanical Turk by Amazon a few years back had labeling and description jobs. Some countries like Kenya, are so poor that people will do anything for a day's pay. I never thought about the use of labeling signs for self-driving cars. Google's Waymo program probably saved a fortune outsourcing the information. Too bad foreign workers get used and not properly rewarded for their efforts.

If it's 10$ an hour work in the USA. You need to compare the numbers being given about wages to what similar low skilled jobs pay in that country.

It's not pretty but that is the world we live in think someone doing the job in the USA for 10$ an hour could probably get better pay mopping floors or flipping burgers.

We can rationalize it - we've been really good doing that over the years. But those jobs in the USA pay $20-35/hr.


This is online 'grunt work' and the workers are rushing to meet quotas constantly.


Let's get real - if these workers in Kenya, Venezuela, India,etc are getting the 'equivalent' of $20 a hr....the work would be done in the US. To me, this is the 'dirty laundry' of A.I. and it needs to be addressed by meta, etc etc...

The article had the USA range as 10-25$hr the 25$ an hour job seems to be in California.

Not arguing for equivalent to USA wages. The wages available in the countries will equivalent type of work. Which is just terrible in Nigeria something like 50-100$ usd a month for 60 plus hour weeks. 200-300$ a month in the Philippines. Again for 60plus hour weeks.

Yes this has been the globalized world we live in the last 30 years.

DeathByCaptcha. This was 20 years ago.
So was DeathByArticleDirectoryWritingAt3USDPerArticle.
And DeathByArticleDirectorySpinningFor1USDEachRootArti cleAnd50"Unique"Versions.

It looks the same here.
DeathByLabeling
And so is DeathByLogoCreationAt5USD
Among many others ...

So I think the main issue here is billion-dollar tech giants based in the U.S. skirting labor laws of developing countries.

And I think that'll continue long after today.
these companies have the option to just get hundreds of contractors hiring people from these countries at less than their national minimum wages because their arrangements are contractual, freelance, or work-made-for-hire.

Minimum wage in Metro Manila (national capital region) is at 235 USD per month.
That's 22 days of 8-hour work. Often blue-collar.
As for white-collar, it's entry level administrative.

So that shakes out to 1.35 USD per hour.
Plus what amounts to national and local standard worker benefits, let's put that at 2 USD per hour.

And they won't even pay that?!

That's the problem.
It's either they're evil enough to use greedy contractors, just to skirt around the national and local labor policies of these developing countries;

Or they just don't care, since existing international regulations won't affect them a bit.

Yes, they're treated badly...

just don't look up the details about a lot of the Walmart products as far as where they're made and by whom and what they actually get paid.

I agree about that. I guess I never thought about A.I. have a 'dirty underbelly' - naive of me.

Techbros abyoosin' hands-on labor.

Quelle frickin' surprise.

I also tried to join Into - but decided to join Outof instead.

I feel out of the loop in this conversation.

It is actually sad to see this but we cannot do anything about it.