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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.
it is cheaper than paying someone in a developed country to do it!
;)
Just my 2 cents
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.
Alexa: "It's right next to your tax returns."
Do these Kenyans know that in 15 years their cab and truck driving jobs are going bye-bye?
That will happen whether or not they work for companies classifying images.
And if you're poor in an impoverished city in Africa, you're going to care more about getting a job, any job, now, and not what is going to happen to possible future jobs fifteen years down the road.
Obama is not Kenyan, he's a Keynesian. There is a difference.
Alabama: Challenge accepted.
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.
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
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.
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.
But automation will eventually displace all work.
That will require human level AI which is pure sci-fi. It may happen someday, but if it does, the changes to our existence will be so profound and unpredictable, that "jobs" will likely be the least of our concerns.
It's all endgame capitalists with all the money in the world, and the rest with nothing.
It was once predicted that only "the rich" would be able to afford cars. The same was predicted about computers, washing machines, dishwashers, etc.
Now you are predicting the same about robots, replicators, blah blah blah. Whatever.
There is no reason that mass produced robots should be unaffordable to the masses. Once the design cost is sunk, it will be cheap stamped or molded parts, and software (marginal cost: $0). Anyone that can afford a refrigerator today, will be able to afford a household robot-maid and fabricator a decade from now.
Automation doesn't "create more jobs". Automation destroys jobs
I see. So that explains why America, Europe, and East Asia are starving, while countries that wisely avoided automation, like Ethiopia, Niger, and Afghanistan are so prosperous. Whatever.
This works only for so long.
There are billions of people living on less than $5 per day. The time when "people have all the stuff they need" is a long, long way off.
Even when people have all the stuff they want, there are still services, which provide 80% of jobs in developed economies. Nobody wants to eat in a fancy restaurant just to be served by a robot. If they want automated food, they would order take-out.
you just need to displace a big enough percentage of works to tip the system off.
That already happened when agriculture was mechanized. Instead of starving, living standards soared, and today we are in a full employment economy.
Ethiopia, Niger, Afghanistan didn't "wisely avoid" automtion. They were devastated by wars and corruption.
The wars and corruption are caused by low productivity leading to poverty and illiteracy.
So name a country that lacks automation and is prosperous based on anything other than tourism or financial tax shelters?
Or name a country that has automated and remains poor.