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Why Big Tech Pays Poor Kenyans To Teach Self-Driving Cars (bbc.com)
Each day, thousands of people from places like Kibera, Africa's largest slum and one of the toughest neighborhoods on earth, commute to an office of Samasource in the east side of Nairobi. The San Francisco-headquartered company occupies four floors of a business park building, with vast banks of computers being used for the job of training data. Google, Microsoft, Salesforce and Yahoo are among the clients of Samasource. What exactly do these people do at Samasource? Its clients won't say, but BBC reports that the "information prepared here forms a crucial part of some of Silicon Valley's biggest and most famous efforts in AI." From the report: [...] Brenda loads up an image, and then uses the mouse to trace around just about everything. People, cars, road signs, lane markings -- even the sky, specifying whether it's cloudy or bright. Ingesting millions of these images into an artificial intelligence system means a self-driving car, to use one example, can begin to "recognise" those objects in the real world. The more data, the supposedly smarter the machine. She and her colleagues sit close -- often too close -- to their monitors, zooming in on the images to make sure not a single pixel is tagged incorrectly. Their work will be checked by a superior, who will send it back if it's not up to scratch. For the fastest, most accurate trainers, the honor of having your name up on one of the many TV screens around the office. And the most popular perk of all: shopping vouchers.
It's the kind of technological progress that will likely never be felt in a place like Kibera. As Africa's largest slum, it has more pressing problems to solve, such as a lack of reliable clean water, and a well-known sanitation crisis. But that's not to say artificial intelligence can't have a positive impact here. We drove to one of Kibera's few permanent buildings, found near a railway line that, on this rainy day, looked thoroughly decommissioned by mud, but has apparently been in regular use since its colonial inception.
Almost exactly a year ago, this building was the dividing line between stone-throwing rioters and the military. Today, it's a thriving hub of activity: a media school and studio, something of a cafeteria, and on the first floor, a room full of PCs. Here, Gideon Ngeno teaches around 25 students the basics of using a personal computer. What's curious about this process is that digital literacy is high, even in Kibera, where smartphones are common and every other shop is selling chargers and accessories, which people buy using the mobile money system MPesa.
It's the kind of technological progress that will likely never be felt in a place like Kibera. As Africa's largest slum, it has more pressing problems to solve, such as a lack of reliable clean water, and a well-known sanitation crisis. But that's not to say artificial intelligence can't have a positive impact here. We drove to one of Kibera's few permanent buildings, found near a railway line that, on this rainy day, looked thoroughly decommissioned by mud, but has apparently been in regular use since its colonial inception.
Almost exactly a year ago, this building was the dividing line between stone-throwing rioters and the military. Today, it's a thriving hub of activity: a media school and studio, something of a cafeteria, and on the first floor, a room full of PCs. Here, Gideon Ngeno teaches around 25 students the basics of using a personal computer. What's curious about this process is that digital literacy is high, even in Kibera, where smartphones are common and every other shop is selling chargers and accessories, which people buy using the mobile money system MPesa.
Sounds like a perfect job to outsource to the third world.
Trump: "Alexa, find Obama's birth certificate..."
Table-ized A.I.
it is cheaper than paying someone in a developed country to do it!
;)
Just my 2 cents
guinea pigs?
Why does big tech employ third-world workers to do repetitive menial tasks? Because they're cheap.
I don't think it's a bad thing. I've lived in some of the nicer areas in Africa, where $0.10 (US) buys a full meal at a restaurant. If a tech company can establish an office, and dump a few tens of thousands of dollars into their economy, those workers will be some of the wealthiest in the area.
It's a paying job, fairly stable, and less likely to kill than many other jobs in the area.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Do these Kenyans know that in 15 years their cab and truck driving jobs are going bye-bye?
The main ingredient lacking in Artificial Intelligence technologies is intelligence. You must use natural intelligence.
They will have not so much bia and will do just what they are told to do.
This is about on par with what they aleady to with "Click the part of the image that has a bike to identify you are a human".
There is no need to have anybody with computer knowledge. "Circle the pig" can be learned in 10 minutes. Speed will increase.
I know when I did testing for an ADSL manual, we went to the most non-tech people we could find, gave them a manual and a PC an looked what happend. We learned more from "Where should I put the CD?" from a noob than from "There is an error in thge explantion of the ESMTP prttotocol on page 26 in the second alinea" from a nerd.
The first was our target audience. The second was not. The same is true for this, I assume.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Does this mean self driving cars will drive like poor Kenyans?
It can work anywhere.
All the "training data" in the Universe isn't going to magically make the shitty excuse for AI they're using suddenly "think" like a real AI would, therefore shitty "self driving cars" will always fall short of the mark and be dangerous to humans both inside and outside the vehicle, a literal deathtrap. Billions will be invested in this boondoggle "technology" and in the end it'll all be for nothing.
It's wonderful to see that even in such harsh conditions, technology can give people an entirely new path and help them become free of some of the limitations of their situation. So much has depended on where you lived for the chances you had. This is just a start, eventually we will see tech jobs in important positions within every society. Anything helping people is great by me.
It helps in addressing the other problems because trickle-down economics does work. Just not when it comes to the rich. It also gives them useful skills to use elsewhere.
also lets them Outsource liability???
What happens when the dial down the match % and you have an miss match that leads to an death?
*oooh oohooh*
like no one eh-else
She drives like Kenya
and I can't help myself
good thing that criminal liability can't be waved with an EULA or that logs / other data can't be locked in an NDA an a criminal trial. But it may take something really bad like an auto drive truck wiping out a school bus full kids to get it to a court room.
Lowest common denominator?
Do these Kenyans know that in 15 years their cab and truck driving jobs are going bye-bye?
Looks like you didn't read the summary closely enough:
It's the kind of technological progress that will likely never be felt in a place like Kibera
Sounds like the article writer thought it would never take away Kenyan jobs.
Personally I think it far more likely it will reach Kenya, as cars that do not need drivers can be way more widely dispersed than cars that require humans, and can operate more cheaply. Also maybe the people tracing humans get a little more careful when they are some of the humans they are tracing to train the systems driving around where they live.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Missing from the summary is the fact that Samasource is a non-profit focused specifically on providing opportunities for some of the worlds poorest people.
wiki
but the parking lot at home depot is already overflowing with beaners.. where will they go when there's no more room at the home depot parking lots?
I have to wonder, are these AIs really learning to generalize? Or are they having millions of examples, so many that any live image must be within a tiny delta of a known image?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
GOP didn't used to be anti-Keynesian; they were ambiguous on the topic. Their recent criticism of it seems to be political in nature, not inherent doctrine*.
To me, Keynesian economics is basic common sense: save up during the good times so you have some spending room during bad times, such as for stimuluses. Everyone should do that with their money (unless you have a fatal disease). I welcome logical arguments against it.
* A few libertarian-leaning Republicans will say that ALL stimuluses are bad because the gov't should be as small as possible, and stimuluses give gov't too much power. But this assumes that slumps always fix themselves, which I don't believe is the case: pessimism can expand in an ever-increasing downward spiral such that no business hires and no consumer spends more than absolute necessary. But it is true we'd have to fork Earth to test this in enough scenarios to be sure what really happens; however, God/Mother-Nature won't let us fork, leaving personal interpretations of a few cases as our only guide. Professional economists have highly varied opinions on the causes and solutions for the Great Depression and other slumps. My interpretation of the data is that stimuluses do help, at least to some degree.
Table-ized A.I.
Have gnu, will travel.
And you're just pissed that they're spending it on what my Progressive ass wants instead of what your conservative ass wants.
CRY MOAR.