Managing Human Workers With an Algorithm

New submitter prayag writes "With the advent of crowdsourcing platforms it has become easier for people to 'automate' simple, yet repetitive tasks that computers aren't good at by hiring thousands of people at once. This can help some business cheaply accomplish certain tasks, but it can also be misused by spammers. A company called MobileWorks is even outsourcing this concept, reaching out to workers in developing nations whose income needs aren't as high. 'Kulkarni, who founded the company in 2010 with fellow graduate students from the University of California, Berkeley, says the value of tasks is set so that workers can reasonably earn $2 to $4 an hour; payments are on a sliding scale, with lower rates for poorer countries. "Even though they are acting as agents of a computer program, we are creating an opportunity for them," he says. MobileWorks charges its clients rates starting at $5 per hour for workers' time.'"

Comments

Fear Not!

[StefanJ]

The larger and wealthier they get, the more secure and generous giant international corporations will feel. Their titanic concentrations of wealth will trickle down to . . .

. . . oh, sorry, I can't type this shit with a straight face long enough to come to a decent snark.

This technique is yet another step down a road toward a world where callous corporations dominate all political and economic activity.

I'll stick to paid interns for this kind of work

[Rude Turnip]

If you're hiring out to a part of the world you'll never visit and never know the people, you are going to miss out on spotting talent that can help your company grow. Our company has a very tedious and mind-numbing research project that is perfect for outsourcing, but we use interns from area colleges. The star players on the intern team shine through and are given a chance for employment. I guess that's the difference between looking at people as a long-term investment versus disposable labor though.

Isn't this exploitation?

[Taco Cowboy]

... payments are on a sliding scale, with lower rates for poorer countries

 
I dunno about you, but when I read that I see exploitation all over it
 

Re:Isn't this exploitation?

[bkk_diesel]

Someone once gave me this thought experiment to help illustrate the problem.

Suppose a company on an alien planet decided to outsource production of some product to earth.
Further suppose that on this other planet gold was plentiful, and wages were measured in tons of gold per day.

Would social do-gooders on the alien planet be outraged that wages paid to earthlings were thousandths of what the wages would be on the alien planet?

Should they be outraged?

Further, would it be ethical on the part of the alien corporation to pay the same wages to their earth counterparts as was common on their home planet? ie. If they needed 100 humans to make their product, would it be ethical to make those 100 people the richest (most powerful) people on earth in the name of "equality" in their home society?

Usually when we talk about exploitation we are making an ethical judgement. There certainly has to be a point at which to offer substantially higher wages to a subset of a community becomes damaging to the community. The fact is (as ShanghaiBill points out below), the company offers poor people a chance to make money at a rate that they voluntarily accept. How is that exploitative?

Re:Isn't this exploitation?

[sFurbo]

In third world countries, tourists often tip e.g. rickshaw drivers handsomly, basically for the same reason that people want to pay much more to sweatshop employees. It quickly becomes apparant that driving a rickshaw is by far the best earning job for non-skilled, an perhaps even semi-skilled, labor. This drives more people to buy rickshaws, until an equilibrium is reached. As the hourly wage earned by driving around tourists is far higher than any other unskilled job, the equilibrium will consist of rickshaw drivers spending most of their time waiting for customers. The equilibrium ensures that the average wage is the same as for other unskilled work.

Now, compare the two situations, the one with and the one without the tourists. The wages for everybody is the same, but with the tourists, we have transferred a lot of people from productive work to unproductive waiting. This is harmful to the local economy. This effect happens even without the rickshaw drivers becomming the richest people around, it just have to pay markedly more than unskilled work does.

Or in short: If you are external to an economy, don't pay excessively for anything.