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Re:OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 per Hour to Ma... by brookst on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @09:16AM (#34426814)
Headline implies there’s something negative here, but I’m not seeing it. Was OpenAI supposed to hire high-skill workers in developed countries to do this work?
Re:OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 per Hour to Ma... by 2OEH8eoCRo0 on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @09:25AM (#34426921)
It's just the dichotomy of using $2/hour labor to build a product that makes you obscenely wealthy.

As another poster said- in Kenya a job is a job and they still paid above average. Money going to Kenya is a good thing. They are doing the work so it must be worth it.

Re:OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 per Hour to Ma... by coffeebeqn on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @09:33AM (#34427018)
This also seems like a much better service job than the horrible scarring moderation jobs at facebook or factory work for apple. Heck maybe even better than most Amazon US jobs at the warehouses
Re:OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 per Hour to Ma... by satvikpendem on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @04:05PM (#34433059)
Well, maybe not quite:

> Almost more interesting in that article I found that Sama, the Kenyan company, was also asked to collect CP and brutal/gore images for OpenAI. After delivering 1400 images, Sama cancelled the contract as this was even too much for them. OpenAI then talked about "miscommunication" and they actually did not really want those CP images. Well, they made its own category for it and asked Sama to collect images of several other categories, but somehow it was lost in communication that for one of theses categories, no images should be collected. Because they are illegal. OpenAI swears they never opened the images they received (and paid for).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34427118

Re:OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 per Hour to Ma... by truculent on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @09:45AM (#34427178)
"I think maybe there is no borderline between countries now because we all live in the same country, it’s called capitalism."
Re:OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 per Hour to Ma... by gowld on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @10:15AM (#34427614)
> The San Francisco–based A.I. startup is projecting $1 billion in revenue by 2024, as was first reported by Reuters and independently verified by Fortune. OpenAI only generated approximately $35 million in revenue in 2022, sources say, and the company is heavily loss-making at the moment.
Re:OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 per Hour to Ma... by key_stroker on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @09:34AM (#34427038)
Read up on the company mentioned, people have mentally suffered working for them. But these days the human cost is just another cost.
Re:OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 per Hour to Ma... by tomhallett on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @10:04AM (#34427448)
"But these days the human cost is just another cost" - this is where I think you, "key_stroker", and the GP, "brookst", might agree on something, in my opinion.

If someone agrees with your premise that "these days the human cost is just another cost", then it seems logical that a newspaper editor/author will shape the headline about economic suffering, instead of mental suffering.

By adding more information to the headline about "$2 per hour", it might make the discussion more confusing by much of the comments discussing the economic part. BUT, a clickbait-y title might increase the reach of the article.

Re:OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 per Hour to Ma... by rsynnott on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @10:09AM (#34427515)
At the very least you'd hope that they'd provide proper mental health support for people doing that; from the article that appears not to have happened.
Re:OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 per Hour to Ma... by brookst on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @02:39PM (#34431876)
That's a serious problem and seems worth an article no matter what country the people are in or what typical wages are in that country. Funny that "$2/hour" struck Time as more newsworthy than "exposed workers to horrific material without training or counseling."
Re:OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 per Hour to Ma... by impalallama on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @10:12AM (#34427558)
Its interesting that no matter how magic and impressive the technology its still built on paying countless people as little as legally possible.
Re:OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 per Hour to Ma... by gowld on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @10:15AM (#34427621)
Article literally says the opposite.
Re:OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 per Hour to Ma... by xdavidliu on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @10:56AM (#34428300)
Didn't headline just state the fact objectively, and any negative implication comes from the mind of the reader? If not, how could the headline be less editorialized (in order to reduce the negative implication)?
Re:OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 per Hour to Ma... by ma2rten on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @11:39AM (#34429020)
1. It doesn't contextualize that $2 is a good wage for Kenya.

2. It says OpenAI "used" workers which has a negative connotation.

3. It is factually incorrect: OpenAI paid a vendor $12.50 per hour. It's unclear if they knew how much the actual workers were paid.

4. It used a negative framing implying ChatGPT is toxic.

So something like

"OpenAI vendor paid Kenyan workers above median wage to make ChatGPT more safe"

Re:OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 per Hour to Ma... by somedude895 on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @11:34AM (#34428916)
"OpenAI hired Kenyan company to make ChatGPT less toxic"

"Kenyan workers helped make OpenAI's ChatGPT less toxic"

"OpenAI paid Kenyan workers minimum wage to work on ChatGPT"

Many different things are objectively true, but of course they mention the pay, because they know that to most of their "Western" readers it sounds outrageous.

Re:OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 per Hour to Ma... by __derek__ on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @11:42AM (#34429076)
The pay is not even close to the most outrageous way to headline this article: it uses "toxic" as a euphemism for, e.g., not generating CSAM, rape, and other sexual violence.
Re:OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 per Hour to Ma... by Dylan16807 on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @12:55PM (#34430251)
A computer cannot generate CSAM. Please do not misuse that phrase and diminish its impact.
Re:OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 per Hour to Ma... by __derek__ on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @01:47PM (#34431045)
If an AI uses source images to generate novel reproductions, wouldn't that still count as CSAM?

Regardless, I should have included the phrase "depictions of" or similar.

Re:OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 per Hour to Ma... by Dylan16807 on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @02:02PM (#34431295)
If an AI is generating novel images, I wouldn't call them CSAM even if they fall under a rule that makes them illegal.

If they're not properly novel then it depends on what the source images were, I guess? But it's not like you'd need to train it on anything obscene for it to figure out how to combine bad things with nudity.

Re:OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 per Hour to Ma... by __derek__ on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @11:36AM (#34428970)
IMO, the headline ignores the crux of the article: that OpenAI contracted with this company to collect and label data for "a safety system" that would classify and filter out "child sexual abuse, bestiality, murder, suicide, torture, self harm, and incest." In the course of doing that, workers were (naturally) exposed to source data in those categories from the internet.
Re:OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 per Hour to Ma... by rtev on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @05:41PM (#34434163)
Did you read the article?