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A comment on The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use humans to do bots' work.

Re:The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use human... by hyperrail on Saturday July 07, 2018 @10:47PM (#17481915)
My favorite example of this sort of thing, mentioned in the Guardian story, is the kerfuffle late last year when Expensify's receipt-reading SmartScan feature was found out to be partly backed by human receipt readers: https://qz.com/1141695/startup-expensifys-smart-scanning-tec...

(I don't file expenses often, but personally when I do so through Expensify, I find SmartScan so slow that I now assume all my "SmartScanned" receipts are going to a human.)

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Re:The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use human... by baybal2 on Sunday July 08, 2018 @06:30AM (#17483088)
Quote from the article

>How to start an AI startup

>1. Hire a bunch of minimum wage humans to pretend to be AI pretending to be human

>2. Wait for AI to be invented

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Re:The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use human... by chris123 on Sunday July 08, 2018 @12:13PM (#17484479)
Translation: Lean Startup Concierge/Wizard of Oz MVP. For anyone wanting to learn or refresh about that, here's a descent article I just Googled up (I reviewed a few and picked this one): https://grasshopperherder.com/concierge-vs-wizard-of-oz-test...
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Re:The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use human... by vultour on Sunday July 08, 2018 @08:50AM (#17483517)
How do they handle bogus results from MTurk? I know people that tried to use it and had to stop because 95% of the "workers" just put meaningless data in hoping you don't notice and they get paid.
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Re:The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use human... by JimmyAustin on Sunday July 08, 2018 @09:11AM (#17483610)
It depends on the task, but if you can get them to do multiple tasks in one, you can ask them to do a task you already know the answer to. If they get the known answer wrong, instant reject.
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Re:The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use human... by PretzelFisch on Sunday July 08, 2018 @09:22AM (#17483660)
Couldn't you just solve that by sending the job to multiple workers and comparing the results?
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Re:The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use human... by vultour on Sunday July 08, 2018 @05:36PM (#17486344)
That's an obvious solution, but you might start approaching a point where it's actually cheaper to hire a dedicated person for it.
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Re:The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use human... by srtjstjsj on Monday July 09, 2018 @03:50AM (#17488621)
That doesn't solve the problem of a person being wrong.
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Re:The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use human... by shanghaiaway on Sunday July 08, 2018 @09:35AM (#17483713)
Think about it.
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Re:The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use human... by jpking on Monday July 09, 2018 @07:59AM (#17489573)
I consulted with a great company in this field and they also use a mix of OCR and humans. Difference is they have trained in-house staff, rather than farming it out to just anyone for the cheapest they can get.
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