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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.
Obama is not Kenyan, he's a Keynesian. There is a difference.
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.
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So far.
But automation will eventually displace all work. Once you do that, there's no star trek-esque space exploration. It's all endgame capitalists with all the money in the world, and the rest with nothing.
What we call "menial jobs" is what MOST PEOPLE in the world do, and are fine doing. The "educated, creative types" are a very rare exception. We might stand a chance in a fully automated world. But "most people" won't. They just don't have the mental ability to.
Automation doesn't "create more jobs". Automation destroys jobs. So far it's been working because goods become cheaper, and more people buy more of those goods, so you need other jobs now. But there will be a point where people won't be needed. Google showed you can have a machine instead of a whole call center. That's literally millions of jobs around the world. What are those people going to do? What other job possibilities do you have NOW that one of the most menial jobs (talking on the phone while reading off a screen) has been effectively destroyed? And more jobs get destroyed every day.
The industrial revolution is a pyramid scheme. It's worked because we haven't reached the bottom yet. But we're getting there.
And none of us is going to be safe. Not even us software developers. Once AI picks up pace, we, some of the best paid positions in the world, will become useless. Some day we will finally see a computer that you will tell it "i want a program that will do X", and the computer will do it. And from the way things look, it will probably be in our lifetime.
Now, don't take me for a luddite. I like automation. I have a robot vacuum, a dishwasher, a clothes washer. The amount of time these things save me allows me to do other things with my money. But I'm well aware that I can afford my hobbies only because I don't have to pay a person to do the things the machines do. I have two money. The maid now has zero money.
And life expectancy is high. We will have a few decades to wait before all these people die off. And once they do, what will the last-capitalist-standing do? Die. The machines will kill our species, not terminator style, not "I, Robot" style. No. They will starve all of us and that will be it.
That is actually a thing.
For comparison, where I was, an average monthly wage was (at the time, in a rural area) 40 USD*. For a single company to pay an American-standard wage there would be like a company opening an American office paying an average of $7.5 million annual salary today. It sounds great, but knowing that a major employer in an area pays such high rates opens the door for local hyperinflation, because everyone who doesn't work for that company knows that the folks who do will be able to pay higher prices. Along with that inflation comes an influx of scams and crime, because the reward is worth far more than the expense of running their scam.
The most I've seen in person was a mining company that paid around $150/month on the same rural region. That's about equivalent to a $300,000 salary in America today. The results were about what's seen in San Francisco... Spiking real estate prices, heavy commuter traffic, and intense pressure to sell property and move out of the local area to cash in on the bubble.
From what I found with a quick search, the average monthly salary in Kenya is $76, which works out to about $3.50 per day. Paying $5 per day (roughly $105/month) doesn't seem that bad, superficially or not.
* All monetary amounts mentioned are US equivalent, regardless of local currency, and not adjusted for inflation, locale, industry, or much of anything. I'm also not completely sure of my math, but the general idea should be correct.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.