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Google Hired Microworkers To Train Its Controversial Project Maven AI (theverge.com)
Google hired gig economy workers to help build out a controversial AI program that the company had paired with the Pentagon to build, according to a new report from The Intercept. "The workers were hired through a crowdsourcing gig company outfit called Figure Eight, which pays as little at $1 an hour for people to perform short, seemingly mindless tasks," reports The Verge. "Whether the individuals were identifying objects in CAPTCHA-like images, or other simple tasks, the workers were helping to train Google's AI that was created as part of a Defense Department initiative known as Project Maven." From the report: Project Maven is a Pentagon project intended to use machine learning and artificial intelligence in order to differentiate people and objects in thousands of hours of drone footage. By employing these crowdsourced microworkers, Google was able to use them to teach the algorithms it was running how to distinguish between human targets and surrounding objects. According to The Intercept, these workers had no idea who their work was benefitting or what they were building.
Figure Eight, which was previously known as Crowdflower, is one of the largest platforms that employs microworkers. On its website, Figure Eight says its platform "combines human intelligence at scale with cutting-edge models to create the highest quality training data for your machine learning (ML) projects." By partnering with these microworker outfits, Google could quickly and cheaply build out its AI. "You upload your data to our platform and we provide the annotations, judgments, and labels you need to create accurate ground truth for your models," the website reads. Google decided against renewing its contract with the Defense Department last June after over 3,000 employees signed a petition in protest of the company's involvement in Project Maven. The deal is set to end in March 2019.
Figure Eight, which was previously known as Crowdflower, is one of the largest platforms that employs microworkers. On its website, Figure Eight says its platform "combines human intelligence at scale with cutting-edge models to create the highest quality training data for your machine learning (ML) projects." By partnering with these microworker outfits, Google could quickly and cheaply build out its AI. "You upload your data to our platform and we provide the annotations, judgments, and labels you need to create accurate ground truth for your models," the website reads. Google decided against renewing its contract with the Defense Department last June after over 3,000 employees signed a petition in protest of the company's involvement in Project Maven. The deal is set to end in March 2019.
$1/hr to help build killing machines. What a bargain for the Military Industrial Complex.
It's not just microworkers doing this. Ever sign up for something online and get one of those Google captchas? Select all the squares that contain crosswalks? All the squares that contain buses?
Guess what you are doing? You are training Google's AIs. And if you want to use that site, you will bloody do it like a good citizen.
That has been appearing more and more places around the web for people who shield their identity from Google, so that Google can de-anonymize you. It is only a matter of time until it is unavoidable if you want to use the web at all.
I choose signs for cars and people for road, and crosswalks for green lights.
So, when the Google self driving cars become common place they'll be running red lights, running over people, crashing into cars and causing MAYHEM!
Ahahahahahah!
-Captain Chaos.
I believe they like to be called "midgets"
And between all of them, they accrued enough medical insurance to visit one dentist's office and get one toothbrush. They couldn't actually afford an appointment.
Getting really frustrated after selecting 200 cars in a row and still not getting past the captcha. =( Next time I'll try doing the reverse....
In my Day we called them Umpa Lumpas.
Give them $1/hr and they have to buy their own food, clothing and accommodation.
May as well make them slaves, they will have better food, clothing and housing, even if its not as good as the owners dog.
This is Americas new version of slavery.
Sure, the gig economy, paying $1 is definitely wrong, but I don't understand what the big issue about companies like google working with the Defense Department.
The defence department takes a huge percentage of the US government budget, it's actually a very good thing if that money is spent developing non-offensive technology. Just because the defence department finances a project, doesn't mean its going to end up being used to kill people.
If it weren't for US defence dollars, the internet wouldn't even exist. There's a substantial amount hypocrisy in play for people working for google... a company that wouldn't exist without the internet protesting against taking defence department dollars.
So now they are going to stop and the military is going to miss out on all that juicy tech. Suuuuureee. Highly likely
"microworker" is a terrifying mentality.
I remember back in about 2011 coming across crowdflower amongst the work for Bitcoin sites. At the time I could work all day to earn about .1btc. it was about $8 worth at the time I think. I managed to earn about a Bitcoin over a few weekends mostly just intrigued and frustrated I didn't have any mining gear. I had an unemployed friend and I suggested he do this. He scoffed an laughed. I said well you're not doing anything else, what's the harm, Bitcoin might rise, it's investing your time. I was quite jealous while I had the intrigue and energy that I had to go to work and eventually after several 60 hour weeks at work plus another 16 hour weekends earning Bitcoin I burned out and forgot about it. Then Bitcoin hit $1000 and my friend asked me about it again. I laughed and laughed and laughed. You're a lazy fuck. You still haven't got a job and now you think it's easy money you're interested. Whose going to pay you over $100 per day to click on images?. Then Bitcoin hit $20k and my friend killed himself. Invest your time wisely and don't snub opportunities.
"as little at"
Is that a new 'Americanism', like 'more then' and 'more that' instead of the bleeding obvious 'more than'?
As little as a dollar an hour? Google?!?! Come on, where's your moral compass now? Those are SLAVE LABOR WAGES and Google should be shamed by their history in this effort. Google will see HUGE profits generated from this work and paid next to NOTHING to the labor who did the real work.
they paid $1 to a big group of people to do mundane, mindless tasks?
they should have used an AI for that!
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
BUSINESSWOMAN
I don't like being in the dark.
EMPLOYEE
What do you mean?
BUSINESSWOMAN
Everything so compartmentalized...
EMPLOYEE
A pain, I know. But all it takes is one leak to the Net, and there goes our work
into the public domain.
BUSINESSWOMAN
It's more like the way you'd organize a prison camp than a laboratory.
EMPLOYEE
Let's not get melodramatic.
BUSINESSWOMAN
I've spent months making this rotor for sorting calcium ions -- and I don't even
know what it's FOR.
-- Deus Ex, predicting the future again
From that 90's MKUltra documentary called The First Wave? Ballsy.
"EVIL GOOGLE is tricking people into helping EVIL US Military (who takes orders from EVIL US GOVERNMENT (who elected by EVIL US PUBLIC)) to KILL INNOCENT TERRORISTS!!! Help us ANTI-GOVERNMENT ANARCHISTS to stop EVIL GOOGLE!!! (PS: DON"T FORGET TO WEAR YOUR TINFOIL HATS @ ALL TIMES!!! EVIL US GOVERNMENT IS TRYING TO READ/CONTROL YOUR MIND!!!)"
and will not pay people more than they get paid. After the machine has been trained, rates for people will go lower.
For some reason, this reminded me of a Sherlock Holmes case.