Fair point. But this is also the exact problem with allowing a small number of individuals to accrue massive wealth by arbitraging labor costs like this. It doesn't matter how much philanthropy Bill Gates engages in, he doesn't understand the needs of the poor better than they do.

Instead of having this elaborate, inefficient system of funnelling money to first world billionaires and then having them (maybe) send some of it back to the developing world, wouldn't it be better if these workers were just paid better in the first place?

In theory, yes, but at some wage level it wouldn't make sense to choose Kenya over India. At another threshold it wouldn't make sense to choose India over the US.

There is overhead to sending jobs to poor, unstable countries in timezones far from headquarters. If we insist that everyone, worldwide should be paid the same wages we are in the US, what incentive do companies have for not just hiring locally and avoiding those costs? If we step it back and say "okay, you should at least pay what you would in India", then why not just hire in India, which is a far more predictable environment than Kenya?

Just because a group of people is accustomed to poor working conditions doesn't make it any more right or ethical.

You could apply your logic to sweatshop scenarios where the people in those countries are just happy to have work, even if the work pays unfair wages, requires unreasonable hours, uses child labor, and provides no benefits to the workers. But hey... the disenfranchised are just happy to have a paycheck right?

It’s a necessary stepping stone on the path to better working conditions and wages. I think people forget what the early days of the Industrial Revolution looked like in our countries.

Can you get there without that? Likely not.

What you’re suggesting is to actually keep them poor for their own good. It’s a nonsensical and counterproductive argument that your making.

Not exactly. I'm suggesting that work like this be paid at a fair rate and mental health precautions are considered and taken seriously.

You can chop logic on this all day long if you like, but the point is, this work is terrible and damaging, and that's why we farm it out to countries like Kenya where the people there don't have a choice.

The work is better than the options people have there, otherwise they wouldn’t do it. Don’t try to spin it as a negative thing for them. They don’t see it that way.

People in Kenya do have a choice, and they pick the best choice for themselves and for their families.

The set of choices for people earning $2/day is different than $20 or $200, but not smaller.

Your aggression is better targeted towards manufacturing jobs in parts of Asia, or Walmart workers in the rural US, than to this context.

Kenyans are able to win this business because they can do this job at a competitive price. If Kenyans would require more, they would not get this (relatively good compared to their alternatives) job, it would go someplace else and Kenyans would lose out.

What would constitute a fair wage? The same as what we would have been paid in the US? Maybe India?

If we insist upon that, then why hire in Kenya, which is an unstable and unpredictable environment that has a lot of inherent risks for the company?

Or are you arguing these jobs shouldn't exist at all?

I'm not a labor wage specialist so your guess is as good as mine. Do you think $1.32/hr. is fair? Are you of the impression after reading the article that the worker's wellbeing was taken seriously and the pay was set at a fair amount considering the kind of work they were doing? I wasn't.

If you're not a wage specialist and my guess is as good as yours, why were you so quick to dismiss someone who actually lives in the country you're opining on?

It's clear you're one who enjoys a circular argument so I'll just leave it at this for you. I don't need to know the exact right amount of money these people should be paid to know that $1.32 per hour for looking at child porn and violent imagery is too little, especially without the requisite mental health resources available. If you are so sure this is a fair situation, maybe for your next job you'll accept minimum wage pay doing similar work.

It isn't pictures, it is text only. I think there is a huge difference. I had to police content for Twicsy (a search engine with 10 billion Twitter images indexed) and I have seen some very bad stuff. There is a huge difference.

* * *

This is just false, if you read the article Sama also collected explicit, illegal images on behalf of OpenAI -- this was the reason the contract was cancelled.

If for the local market $1.32-$2/hour take-home is good compared to alternatives (of which I have no idea, but local claims seem to support that, listing comparable rates but for gross not take-home), then yes, it's fair, and it would harm the workers if we'd prohibit that, because they would have to take a worse local job.

> Just because a group of people is accustomed to poor working conditions doesn't make it any more right or ethical

I think this kind of moral puritanism is an enemy of real social progress. Maybe we shouldn't or can't expect some supreme, pure state of "ethical", maybe all we can or should expect is "better".

what's insulting is that you assume one kenyan speaks for all of them. even worse, that the random kenyan not being paid $2/hr by openapi is qualified to speak on their behalf. on what basis do you accept the first statement. if another kenyan claims the opposite would be then become some vacillating organism between two (or more) positions?

I only assume that one Kenyan is more representative than one westerner. I'd happily invite other Kenyans to comment their own perspective!

The job pays too little based on the fact that it can leave the "employees" traumatized and scarred for life.

But it does not take away from the fact that it can negatively affect the employees in an adverse way long term, and takes advantage of poor people to give them an objectively bad deal based on an information asymmetry where the person in question might not know that they have to read graphic descriptions of bestiality and pedophilia.

This is an argument that the job shouldn't exist at all. That's an okay argument to make (I personally lean that way), but has no relevance to whether $2/hour would be worth it to a Kenyan.

You don't see any logic in the difficulty of a job influencing the wage of that job?

So you think that it's ok to traumatize and scar workers for life, as long as you pay them enough?

I think people can make that choice as long as it's informed. The company should also be providing mental health support as part of the job. Someone has to do it. There aren't automated systems that can do a remotely decent job at moderation yet. I know you don't think it's okay for trained systems or social networks to distribute traumatizing material.

> traumatized and scarred for life.

Scarred for life by reading/labeling text? There is obviously a big difference between labelling pictures or video and text. I would be open to seeing an actually study, but my prior would be that text must be harmless. I would certainly be open to reading any text, especially if the context is that the text is for training purposes.

Some had images, also they did other work for the hiring company.

Sounds like you haven't read the article.

Correct. But then the headline is confusing.

Other content filtering work is primarily videos & pictures. Check out this article: https://www.wired.com/story/social-enterprise-technology-afr...

Sama/source in trouble yet again!

Do you think that person speaks for all Kenyans? Clearly $2 an hour is too little but people are exploitable when they need money.

I already replied to this question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34427780

> I only assume that one Kenyan is more representative than one westerner. I'd happily invite other Kenyans to comment their own perspective!

You're confusing being poor with being financially stressed. The two are not the same.