Upol EhsanJan 18, 2023

If you've used ChatGPT, you may have noticed that it's relatively decent at avoiding toxicity. Is it because of some magical AI trick?

Not really.

The real heroes are the ghostworkers who have worked tirelessly to detect toxicity in text containing "child sexual abuse, bestiality...torture, self harm, and incest" (many of which are illegal by US laws).

How much were they paid for this mentally scarring task?

#ChatGPT #AI #ghostwork #datawork #labor #ResponsibleAI #ML #gpt3

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Show threadUpol EhsanJan 18, 2023

Did you know #OpenAI paid outsourced Kenyan workers only $1.32-$2 per hour for this extremely burdensome task?

While the datawork done by these ghostworkers made ChatGPT less toxic, the work left people mentally scarred.

However, the moment the company got whiff of the Time's investigation, they terminated the contract, leaving these human beings high and dry.

https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/

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Exclusive: OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour to Make ChatGPT Less Toxic

A TIME investigation reveals the poor conditions faced by the workers who made ChatGPT possible

Time
Show threadKathy BaxterJan 18, 2023
@upol OpenAI is not alone in taking advantage of vulnerable populations by paying them pennies to read & label horrific content. Google, Meta, & Amazon have employed ppl in refugee camps to label their data.
#responsibleAI
https://restofworld.org/2021/refugees-machine-learning-big-tech/
Ideas | Refugees help power machine learning advances at Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon

Big tech relies on the victims of economic collapse.

Rest of World
Show threadUpol EhsanJan 18, 2023
@baxterkb thanks so much for adding on to this. Indeed, OpenAI is not alone. I remember how Mturk was valorized during the imageNet days. Little did we appreciate the grunt work of the MTurkers who made that entire infrastructure possible. As our hunger for data increased, so did the demands on the ghost workers.
Show threadalapiteJan 19, 2023
@upol @baxterkb As unpleasant as it might be to read such news, let’s not lose sight of the plight of the refugees themselves. How would they be any better off if all of these companies took the supposed “high ground” of never offering work to refugees? Are the refugees simply supposed to get by on whatever meagre handouts Western governments and NGOs might deign to give them between fits of absent-mindedness?
Show threadUpol EhsanJan 19, 2023
@alapite @baxterkb big difference between offering work to refugees and exploiting them for their labor. No one here is advocating that the work shouldn't be there. Everyone here is saying that work, when given, should not be exploitative. Having personally worked with refugees, I can attest that exploitative work causes net harm.
Show threadalapite
@upol @baxterkb But what exactly does “exploitative” mean here? The point I’m trying to make is that all too often people use the term without bothering to ask if those being “exploited” have any alternatives. As someone who has lived on the other side of this story, I know that it’s perfectly rational to prefer “exploitation” to wasting one’s life in supposedly dignified inactivity and destitution. Let the refugees decide if they’re being exploited rather than making the decision for them.
Jan 19, 2023 at 6:42pmWeb
Show threadUpol EhsanJan 21, 2023
@alapite @baxterkb Thanks for sharing your lived experience. No one is undercutting your lived experience. We are making "yes and" points, not "no, but".