Sarah T. Roberts, Ph.D.

@ubiquity75@dair-community.social
8K Followers
1,010 Following
3.4K Posts

Professor, researcher, writer, teacher. I care about #contentmoderation, #tech, #digitallabor, the state of the world. I like animals and #synthesizers and games (#ttrpg; #boardgames; #videogames). On the internet since 1993. Mac user since they came out. I like old computers and OSes. I love #cooking. Siouxsie is my queen.

Los Angeles/Tovangaar-based white settler. Gay lady.

I wrote an entire book on content moderation called Behind the Screen. Now might be an interesting time to read it.

Please doEngage thoughtfully on serious topics
Please don’tTone-police me; better to unfollow
General sillinessWelcomed
We shouldseize the means of our social media production!
Sarah T. Roberts, Ph.D.Jul 21, 2023
Show threadProf. Emily M. Bender(she/her)Jul 21, 2023

The assertion that LLMs are "capable of surprisingly sophisticated reasoning" is supported with a link an article @willknight wrote on the "Sparks of AGI" paper + criticism of it.

Extruding synthetic text is not reasoning. If the extruded text looks like something sensible, it is because we have made sense of it. I find it dismaying that even critical journalists like @willknight feel a need to repeat these tropes.

Sarah T. Roberts, Ph.D.Jul 14, 2023
Does anyone know how I might access a copy of the “Orecchio” article from Red Herring’s April 1999 issue (an April Fool’s edition)?
Sarah T. Roberts, Ph.D.Jun 23, 2023
The simplified Mandarin edition of Behind the Screen is out, and it’s lovely. It’s been released by the Guangdong People’s Publishing House.
Sarah T. Roberts, Ph.D.Jun 21, 2023
Robert ReichJun 5, 2023

Colgate-Palmolive, which controls 40% of the toothpaste market, has increased prices 12% even as volume declined by 2%. As a result, the company's profits have soared.

Greed and market concentration are driving inflation, not workers demanding better wages and benefits.

Sarah T. Roberts, Ph.D.Jun 21, 2023
Morten BayJun 21, 2023

When it comes to digital labor outsourced to developing countries, AI annotators are the new commercial content moderators.

https://www.theverge.com/features/23764584/ai-artificial-intelligence-data-notation-labor-scale-surge-remotasks-openai-chatbots

@ubiquity75

AI Is a Lot of Work

How many humans does it take to make tech seem human? Millions to support OpenAI, Google, Meta, and every other major tech company. As AI becomes ubiquitous, a vast tasker underclass is emerging — and not going anywhere.

The Verge
Sarah T. Roberts, Ph.D.Jun 21, 2023

It’s important to keep the internet full of erroneous information, conspiracies, and confusion ahead of the next federal elections; otherwise, Jim Jordan’s allies don’t stand a chance.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/technology/gop-disinformation-researchers-2024-election.html

G.O.P. Targets Researchers Who Study Disinformation Ahead of 2024 Election

A legal campaign against universities and think tanks seeks to undermine the fight against false claims about elections, vaccines and other hot political topics.

The New York Times
Sarah T. Roberts, Ph.D.Jun 15, 2023

These Governors should be arrested for human trafficking.

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/busload-of-migrants-arrives-in-los-angeles-from-texas/3170652/?amp=1

Busload of migrants arrives in Los Angeles from Texas

A group of migrants arrived from Texas in Los Angeles Wednesday in a move announced by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who blames President Joe Biden for a “refusal…

NBC Southern California
Sarah T. Roberts, Ph.D.Jun 15, 2023

These governors are criminal human traffickers.

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/busload-of-migrants-arrives-in-los-angeles-from-texas/3170652/?amp=1

Busload of migrants arrives in Los Angeles from Texas

A group of migrants arrived from Texas in Los Angeles Wednesday in a move announced by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who blames President Joe Biden for a “refusal…

NBC Southern California
Sarah T. Roberts, Ph.D.Jun 13, 2023

It doesn’t take much of anything to threaten the powers that be. So very little, in fact, that it makes me have hope - probably the very opposite of what was intended by the destruction of this public artwork.

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/chevron-destroyed-public-art-piece-richmond-california-1234671032/

Chevron Says It Destroyed Public Art Piece in California Near Refinery

Organizers were holding out hope that the work hadn’t been destroyed.

ARTnews.com
Sarah T. Roberts, Ph.D.Jun 12, 2023
The first 15-20 minutes of doing email is deleting crap emails.