Real Power Behind AI Revealed

Live-streamed on September 9, 2024
Benjamin Shestakofsky, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses his recent book Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality.
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Professor Shestakofsky tackles his time working within and researching the world of venture capital, giving some practical examples of the risky and unsustainable mentality that drives the industry, stepping back to walk through some of the extreme examples of the exploitation it relies on, including obscuring the failed promises of their technologies by relying en masse on low-wage human labor - be it in the Philippines or Las Vegas. Expanding on this, Benjamin walks Sam and Emma through the impact the VC revolution has had on undermining the quality of services and helping to spur the “enshittification” of the internet, before wrapping up with some alternatives to this Silicon Valley mentality and the policies that can be used to incentivize that change.
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[@Zuriki09]

Reminder that the AI utopia is not to free us from the need to labor, it's to free billionaires from the need for labor.

[@michaelthomas229]

100%

[@barryroode6409]

Too damn true

[@middleagebrotips3454]

The need to pay for labor, fixed for you

[@WiseWeeabo]

Nah it will. It will even free the billionaires from themselves. The guy they're talking to in this video has absolutely no idea what he's talking about or what he's saying.

[@lococomrade3488]

Explain the difference.

[@MrPhotodoc]

Anytime a company says they are looking to hire "team members" or to "join our family" you should beware. They really mean you are expendable.

[@fleetadmiralsidiqi1941]

Centuries ago they would never advertise. They would capture my people from abroad and chain us up into forced labor for these same roles.

[@markzuckergecko621]

Yes, everyone is expendable. This isn't new. You aren't entitled to a job just because you want money, you have to earn your position and keep it.

[@markzuckergecko621]

​@@fleetadmiralsidiqi1941your people sold each other.

[@fleetadmiralsidiqi1941]

@@markzuckergecko621 that is an overstatement. I know you want to pretend that there were never European boots on the ground raiding villages but that would definitely be a bald face lie.

[@basedgamerguy818]

​@@fleetadmiralsidiqi19411.5 million Christians of European descent were enslaved by Muslim rulers. It's the reason the US attacked Tripoli

[@Artemis.94]

Filipino with outsourcing experience here. American clients are the worst low-ballers. The pay is abysmal.

[@FowCowMow]

The decision-makers in our economy are the same people who are convinced that immigrants are a drain on the economy, when they're our backbone. Most wealthy people in this country have bought into the idea that they achieved it all themselves, and most of them are racist.

[@louiea4276]

I guess you don't deal with Indians... Probably because they're busy with Americans low balling them too 😂

[@davidfaustino4476]

Don't take the job if it's not worth it.

[@Artemis.94]

@@davidfaustino4476 I only did it to save up money to finish my 1st degree.

[@markzuckergecko621]

@@Artemis.94 oh no, people trying to pay the least they can for a product. Those monsters.

[@moehawk2243]

This guy is right on with this story, I worked in legal IT for 45 years and this company called SAP wanted to create a legal module for their enterprise system so they paid my company to allow them to steal my propriety information created for the company. Ultimately they were to deploy their system but that system turned out to be humans in the Philippines.

[@cloudycolacorp]

worrying how much of the big shiny tech solutions just boil down to new methods of involving sweatshops

[@micahgelfand8282]

​@@cloudycolacorp Innovative ways...to exploit the global south

[@b.douglas2753]

Same in the Accounting biz. Will advertise as fully automated bookkeeping, but so much if the categorizing still requires critical thinking that AI can't duplicate. The work is actually being done by cheap labor oversees.

[@fmleverynameistakenx]

didnt know i needed another reason to hate SAP

[@genossinwaabooz4373]

​@@fmleverynameistakenx I know I have mine!

[@robertborland5083]

The classic "Mechanical Turk": the "automated system" requires a great deal of human processing to function at even a rudimentary level. So much of AI adoption has been essentially firing half the skilled workers & then rehiring them as unskilled labor, temporary workers, or independent contractors.

[@lizzirountree93]

Well put

[@SpoopySquid]

"Alright gang, let's unmask this creepy AI... why, it was Old Man Labour Exploitation all along!"

[@tomgears6508]

No one is old enough to get your joke Scoob! Zoikes!!😊

[@tomgears6508]

Besides me…. 😢

[@kaelandin]

@@tomgears6508What do you mean? Scooby Doo is still fairly popular and new media being made.

[@mlisaj1111]

I got it…

[@nurlindafsihotang49]

Shut it. We ain't dead yet.😂

[@jklinders]

I was immediately brought to mind of Monticello. Thomas Jefferson's house. He had built in a bunch of structural things that allowed his slaves to make things happen behind the scenes that looked super high tech and almost magical. Functionally a smart house powered by slaves. This "AI" shit is exactly the same thing.

[@genossinwaabooz4373]

The most money was in production of nails! Made by children. What a horror...

[@Alex-cw3rz]

So AI is not taking jobs it's just outsourcing

[@micahgelfand8282]

AI = An Indian

[@robertmanywhale982]

always has been XD

[@mustanggox]

it's definitely a combo of both

[@IlIlllIIIllIIlIIlII]

Look, AI is not going to take humans out of the pipeline (literally "replacing workers"), we need to stop thinking of it that way. There will always be a need for a skilled worker to verify the results. However, if 1 AI-assisted worker can be as productive as 10 normal workers, then AI has just "replaced" 90% of the workforce. As for the "training" that they're talking about in this video, that creates a huge number of very short-term unskilled jobs that don't need to be repeated. It's mostly just labeling the data and it's incredibly tedious. The actual training is done by people with graduate degrees. If you want a real horror story about AI outsourcing, look up OpenAI's Kenya contract that was canceled by the contractor because it was inflicting too much psychological damage on the workers.

[@MJ-rl7pj]

It's like Elmo's robot just being a dude in a suit.

[@Hahahahaaahaahaa]

Wait? It was capitalism the whole time?!

[@XSpiegel]

This guy looks like if Sam and Kyle Kuliski had a son 😂

[@gershomkoinei8256]

😂

[@Riddlestar93]

I can't unsee it now, thanks mate

[@P0rk_Sinigang]

Okay good

[@micahgelfand8282]

Hey guys, ummmm

[@Novgord98]

But why doesn t he have blonde/white strips of hair then

[@jabik9895]

Is it just me or is tech a lot like sales? They have to keep coming up with new things to sale and AI is just the newest thing.

[@420RittzBish]

That's exactly what's happening. They can't just release a new product. It has to be "life changing AI next gen never before seen technology." Nobody would give a shit if they just said "Check out our latest digital assistant, Chatgpt."

[@clintparsons3989]

That’s a chicken versus egg observation though.

[@kylenmaple4668]

“Sales” isn’t a sector. It’s a process. Tech involves selling things that don’t exist and may not have a real function. Its the ultimate playground for snake oil salesman

[@ConsciusVeritasVids]

For marketers, AI is the new "gamer RGB lighting" of electronic devices. They've already got expos advertising things like "AI-powered keyboards" because the magic and mystery behind machine learning is a selling point that lets them bump up the prices.

[@thoughtlesskills]

They spent too much on making people want the next new thing and now they struggle to innovate while somehow their products get more expensive.

[@JohnThompson-u7x]

If AI will replace 1 worker, then it's worth it to the business class. Whether or not it works or not, doesn't matter.

[@Rondoggy67]

Yup. Money isn't the only driver. Trust is a major factor; these people don't trust anything that they can't control completely. They'd prefer not to depend on people at all.

[@johnrohlf7902]

So the Great Wizard Zucher behind the curtain is just a minimum wage Filipino.

[@kel-A-3414]

Isn't there historical precedence for rich folks in the past using basically slaves/servants to transport food and stuff in order to impress guests and make it look like they had some automated food delivery system in their homes??

[@genossinwaabooz4373]

Ah yes...!

[@doctorbigsmiles]

I really hate getting 4 minutes into the video, before it hits me - i heard this yesterday in the original video

[@doctorbigsmiles]

You sneaks, you got one more view outta me!! I'm not gonna take this crap much longer! 🤣

[@Dante3214]

@@doctorbigsmiles my mother is my sister

[@doctorbigsmiles]

@@Dante3214 i know they both licked my ball sacc

[@FFXIgwyn]

No social media company should be legally permitted to grow further than their content moderation capabilities can keep users safe. Our rights and safety are more important than rapid irresponsible expanion without considering consequences.

[@staudinga]

That's what I keep saying. Their stupid "We're too big for this to work" excuse just means that they never should've/would've grown to that size with proper laws/regulations in place, and should be split up

[@yellowblanka6058]

You can thank unchecked capitalism and corporate welfare. It's all about increasing shareholder value, everything else is secondary or "communism"

[@christopherellis2663]

More to the point, these human robots don't understand the context of remarks. Quite unethical of them

[@silviopina_111]

I work in animation and its getting worse...

[@MalikTolbert3]

You might need to get another job that AI cannot replace. I need a job myself so that I can have some money when my dad is old to work

[@fluxonite]

How bad is it for you in animation?

[@silviopina_111]

@fluxonite it's going to slowly shift and get worse. My personal job feels pretty secure, for the few years I have left ahead before retirement, also we are one of the few studios left who hand-draw. Unfortunately CGI is being hit the hardest and I feel the pain of the younger generations. I am not at all "against tech"... I am against "greedy humans", who just look at the bottom line. I don't think I can post a link in a comment, but you can look up this article in Cartoon Brew, by title searching : Lionsgate Signs Deal With AI Company Runway, Hopes That AI Can Eliminate Storyboard Artists and VFX Crews

[@TrogdorBurnin8or]

Progressive corporate income tax, progressive private capital gains tax. There is little value to society in unregulated monopoly.

[@emperorzensekai7837]

I worked as a content moderator for online games, thanks for covering how the companies are at odds with the ppl trying to moderate the sites and why. I wish you guys could find out about what happened to the Facebook Moderator union attempts and the various attempts of gaslighting of what really goes on.

[@down-to-earth-mystery-school]

I read that some of the things the moderators have to look at, is deeply traumatizing, and yet no mental health support for these ‘contractors’

[@emperorzensekai7837]

@@down-to-earth-mystery-schoolyeah I was an independent contractor myself and I have been diagnosed with PTSD from what I dealt with. It’s kind of a 6 hour rant of how terrible it really is in the game/social media industry. Nameless to say I became a Bernie bro real fast Lol

[@tjnucnuc]

I worked for a direct marketing company with a few thousand employees. Eventually they outsourced most the jobs to the Philippines. I remember talking to them and was surprised most of them sleep on site on bunk bed style cots and yes they were getting paid cents on the dollar compared to us.

[@folly_ah_duh]

I'm calling it now- AI is the next bubble and it's going to be tech giants asking for bailouts in a decade

[@micahgelfand8282]

Yep

[@benedictsumberbatch458]

it already is. the thing about companies using it like this is that all that bad data they've been feeding into their systems that large portions of their workforce have to work around or translate into usable information is gonna start piling up errors that will create larger and larger problems. it might also reveal a lot of Creative Accounting that has been occurring, but at this point, everything might be a complete house of cards.

[@kaelandin]

I’d say less than a decade.

[@JohnDoe-my5ip]

A decade? Try 18 months…

[@davidradtke160]

No bailout, they already make billions, AI bullshit wont hurt their bottom line enough for that. But it will destroy the stock prices for a while when they finally admit it’s unprofitable bullshit.

[@tonyritter4919]

We need to look at where we work and consume as much as how we vote. Campaign funds don't come from poor people.

[@genossinwaabooz4373]

Well for the charitable organizations sector - it IS the lower income brackets that (collectively) do the lion's share.

[@lizzirountree93]

I work in the nautical industry and this is true for all the offshore navigating apps. People think the maps magically show the world as it is, digitally, BUT navionics etc literally (under)pay people in the Philippines to hand scan paper charts. This not only means there's no "magic technology" behind the app, but also that there is human error in the digitised chart (map) as in a section that contains a rock or channel marker can easily be missed which then has very real physical consequences for navigation.

[@nurlindafsihotang49]

Yep. Just like my google maps says it was a road and almost got me plunged into rice paddy fields at 10 pm. Noice.

[@shawnnelson1669]

It's not just overseas. You can work from home as an AI "trainer" if you can live on 25k a year.

[@kylenmaple4668]

Anyone else think it’s INSANE that more than 50% of the S&P is oriented towards AI? Could this be the biggest bubble ever? I think so…

[@davidradtke160]

Naw it’s big sure but not that big yet. It seems bigger then it actually is vs like the 2008 housing bubble.

[@kylenmaple4668]

@@davidradtke160 idk man, the size of the bubble and the size of the crash are not necessarily the same thing. The 2007/2008 crash was exceptionally large because of the nature of the assets in jeopardy and the sheer lack of liquidity in the market at that time. Nobody could buy and everybody HAD to sell = huge crash. Right now there is a lot of liquidity and interest rates just lowered so honestly the sheer size of this bubble is unprecedented. However, probably won’t crash as dramatically because liquidity isn’t that tight and the assets are mostly speculative, not finite. The bubble is mostly contained within the markets, therefore less dramatic consequences

[@fredfuckstone914]

​@@kylenmaple4668Lex Greensill.

[@Steve2Carla]

These are great ideas but it seems like no matter what the original intention of any idea is, in the end, it always gets corrupted because greedy a-holes have all the power and money.

[@rafes8206]

The reason Uber can’t make money is the same for the music business. Thanks to amazing science and tech the cost of creation of a song or a web service goes to 0. Machines were meant to save us from shitty labor not constantly create money schemes

[@DarkZeno]

Current, "AI", isn't AI. It's just machine learning. Machine learning isn't AI. Not even with LLM's. It's just, again, machine learning. This will one day, hopefully, turn into AI, but it's not AI, currently. It's just a marketing gimmick.

[@travisdixon3309]

You’re100% correct They needed something to boost stock prices. All of this was covered a while back with Amazon Go. You can barely call it news.

[@gorillaguerillaDK]

Yup, ChatGPT should be called an advanced artificial parrot…

[@avalokiteshvara113]

Yeah its wild how carried away people are getting with things weve already had for years

[@2intheampm512]

I agree with you, but unfortunately this is just the common parlance. Hell even before this new wave of transformer-based models, things like computer-controlled opponents in video games are called "AI", and most of those are just using basic decision trees, not even any machine learning algorithms.

[@frevazz3364]

Precisely and to add we are not remotely close to actually achieving AI.

[@drstrangeclock2253]

Going through similar things at VSP vision. Just rolled out AI. I knew downsizing was going to happen and sure enough it did. Closed all of the labs and call centers within a year or so of rollout, gave the perception to employees and the practices this was not going to happen. I will be out of my job in beginning October and hearing a lot of your discussion ring true in conversations from the optician practices who are irritated and feeling deceived. I’m left to field questions about why I have been downsized and out of a job. Feel like I’ve been left holding the bag.

[@davidradtke160]

I get the call centers…but how can they close labs?

[@peterlynchchannel]

Before I read the name I thought, "Oh it's Jordan Chariton!"

[@david3188col]

I thought the same exact thing.

[@kevinpalmer9942]

Someone said he looks like if Sam and Kyle Kullinski had a son.

[@Dazen101]

A real conversation: Investor: "Have you seen AI? One day we won't even need to hire actors or writers for commercials." Me, a writer: "Ha ha. That sure sounds great." 😰 People have no idea the wave of unemployment that is coming to our shores. Tech bros and stock investors are salivating at the cost reduction AI can provide. If it can produce something "just good enough", it's over.

[@lococomrade3488]

Don't act like there's a job for every wanna-be artist out there.

[@Dazen101]

@@lococomrade3488 Did you think you had something here?

[@lococomrade3488]

@@Dazen101 Yeah. More depth than a Luddite. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@kaelandin]

@@lococomrade3488Who do you think makes the data to train these?

[@lococomrade3488]

@@kaelandin Apparently, Luddites. Also: dead artists can also be found online. Weird, huh.

[@letsRegulateSociopaths]

"A very small fraction of people .... who really stand to benefit at all..." yes, we know, it's called late stage capitalism and it is (nearly) every single one of these entities.

[@periwinklemcfee7274]

yes. I just came across this: "“The firms that have gone public since 2000 rarely create employment at a large scale; the median firm to IPO after 2000 created just 51 jobs globally.” “In 2015,” Davis writes, “the combined workforces of Facebook, Yelp, Zynga, LinkedIn, Zillow, Tableau, Zulily and Box were smaller than the number of people who lost their jobs when Circuit City was liquidated in 2009.” ( Hedge funds won't hire more workers, why give them tax cuts?!) anyways, Cheers!

[@GNMbg]

big part of the world tried communism. the other part tried capitalism... both had their good run but crumbled in the end... whats next

[@coonhound_pharoah]

@@letsRegulateSociopaths Real Marxists are fascists in 2024.

[@kaelandin]

@@GNMbgHow about we try a midway point?

[@blopez54]

Emma's comments are so bright.

[@Dragonette666]

I worked at a place called "Interactions" over 10 years ago, I was "helping" avr menus get callers to the place they needed to be.If the AI didn't understand them they played a quick recording for me and I had to decipher the context of it and click on a menu to move them where they needed to be. It was kind of funny sometimes you would hear people yelling at their family.

[@pgabrieli]

if it was 10 years ago, it had nothing to do with the generative IA available today.

[@MuShinnen]

​@@pgabrieliThe thing that isn't real?

[@pgabrieli]

@@MuShinnen what isn't real? the thing that I've been working on, and with, for over a year? 😂😂😂

[@MuShinnen]

@@pgabrieli Yes. Congratulations. You're working on something that ultimately won't work as advertised. Sorry to break the news to you. Happy you're getting paid for it though.

[@Darksoul9669]

A big misconception people have with AI from a copyright or personal info/likeness perspective is thinking that copyright laws will save you. I don’t see how this tech will ever be outlawed wholesale or something so the biggest thing is going to corporate consolidation being more dangerous. Maybe a celeb can pursue litigation on their likeness or art but good luck proving Microsoft or Google scraped your photos or art and is using them. Its going to really harm the ability for non-massive conglomerates to compete in any field. Not saying everyone should have access or something but these corporations need to be broken up to combat this imo.

[@sloanekuria3249]

I'm trying to learn about starting a non-profit co-op offering a public service, not a product. Instead of chasing a "market" I want to build to meet material needs where I'm at - but for it to remain stable there needs to be a good framework for the organization and that feels daunting.

[@markzuckergecko621]

@@sloanekuria3249 wait until you learn you have to earn money to keep a business in business.

[@genossinwaabooz4373]

Many have paved the way that you can learn from. Also, I'm most motivated about the rare legal formation of L3C (type of LLC) instead of the easiest way ( just ordinary LLC). I think there's still room to come up with much better structures to support what people want to be involved in.

[@anonymousperson1142]

That's called socialism, and if you try to build it the CIA will kill you.

[@photoboy]

I worked Ubereats for 3 years before the pandemic. Our pay kept get so low that it was pointless to work for them anymore. In Toronto, there's been a clear explosion of Indian workers who are the only ones desperate enough to do that job. These companies are wild.

[@akeleven]

More venture capitalism is not the answer. Please review what the question is. We are being bled dry. Private equity is fighting over who extracts my last penny. Silicon valley is just a scam. Maybe it was a valuable at one time but it's all about hype now. Waiting for KZbin to be replaced by a better product

[@sassysince90]

I keep getting emails from vendors asking to showcase how they can automate my job and they go in the trash 😂

[@robertcampbell67]

You should have Lily Irani on. She works in the unionization effort for Amazon turkers

[@phaedrussocrates7636]

Unfortunately that means there's stll lot more lot more room for development - but at gigantic cost in energy/ climate

[@davejohncole]

"present company excluded" GOLD

[@waeiski]

These digital sweatshops are well-known in the field of digital labour research. Good to have some attention from journalists on this topic. These tasks that AMT, Toloka etc pay people on the internet do can be really weird.

[@TheDajamster]

Sounds similar to Amazon's Mechanical Turk project. Low paying piecework doing things that computers couldn't, like interpreting handwritten notes, spotting people on security cams, checking photos.

[@itmecube]

In a lot of cases AI stands for Actually Indians. This has been true since AWS provided mechanical turk decades ago.

[@gorillaguerillaDK]

Uber shouldn’t even be allowed to exist! Driving with customers should require a license, and everyone doing such work should be organized. Those owning cars in cooperatives that run central, and those employed in workers unions….

[@billybigwig1154]

Love the show. Left is best.

[@jojoenerez4815]

The outsourcing company or the call center company will attract clients and making unrealistic promises of fast efficient customer service handling. But customers fight for their rights and the Filipino CSR will protect the company against the customer.

[@danielcouturier85]

Adobe is a great example

[@JoeDiMaggio-fu8ld]

Please get someone from MIT to school you on the basics of machine learning. First you say AI is no better than auto-complete. Now you say it's actually an offshore call center. It's actually a genuine field of scientific study and has been for decades. Look at AlphaGo. Look at advances in AI for radiology. Why do you keep doubling down on stupid?

[@sparkymcplug3765]

Artificial intelligence, what every trump supporter has.

[@gorillaguerillaDK]

Just without the "intelligence" part… But yes, they are sort of like "ChatGPT" - basically just a big bunch of parrots….

[@drrbrt]

"Man behind the dang-ol' curtain, man." -Boomhauer.

[@auntiedee9468]

US insurance carriers have mostly transitioned their member services to a similar company.....mostly one company serving the big carriers.

[@cyrilsouchon]

If you remove all the workers in the world from the workplace, and make all the widgets and services auto-magically, who is going to by the products coming off the assembly lines, and use the services that are available?

[@davidradtke160]

I mean no one…that’s the real problem with inequality. It ultimately destroys the wealth of the wealthy that support it.

[@redmed10]

The rich dont care. They'll be dead and gone in 50 years when this becomes a reality and capitalism collapses.

[@nurlindafsihotang49]

Maybe the robot will?

[@cyrilsouchon]

@@nurlindafsihotang49 lol

[@CrashKaiju]

Its like those amazon stores where the "algorithm" determined what you bought and charged you automatically. It turns out it was just low wage employees in india watching the cameras.

[@coolsteralpha]

Adobo Intelligence

[@micahgelfand8282]

😂

[@Habeebea]

Public banking with housing and technology loan where the city/ county/ state get's a percentage of profits in the general fund restricted to paying for municipal labor and infrastructure.

[@surferdjnj]

As a tech professional, I feel this is an irrelevant story. Sure he studied ONE company who's NOT actually using machine learning. This doesn't speak to the larger actual issue of who's data is training the machine model. Is it really news that the coding is offshored, that workers aren't paid fairly?

[@pin65371]

The outsourcing isn't really the coding. It's the classification. Basically the people looking at pictures and saying what is in thr picture. The coding is being done at the companies and now by ai for the easy stuff.

[@Kalamolng]

TBF for 2 dollar an hr that's P100 per hour here and if you work for 8 hrs you'd get P800 per day which is almost twice the minimum salary here.

[@NotShowingOff]

A lot of ppl think that a strong dollar means better imports. But it can also mean that labor gets imported

[@flcamera]

don't generalize, not all AI, unlike people are not all created or represented equal

[@foxstele]

Announcing the hot new company "Mechanical Turk Inc". We are using the cutting edge technology of AAI. Thats Artificial Artificial Intelligence. Our AAI system makes use of novel task delegation technology. Some people may accuse our company as just being a front end for Task Rabbit, but ...

[@bremensname6057]

Question for Sam, Exactly how high is that pie going??

[@BrianSheppard]

Clickbait for AI Luddites.

[@CyclicCipher]

Imagine you find out that AI character chatbot you made do ERP was actually an underpaid human in the Philippines

[@frevazz3364]

Full Self Driving is probably someone behind a monitor and a joystick in Africa, India, or the Philippines.

[@sabalos]

my first thought was 'who's Al'

[@superordinate]

I thought this was a Thunderfoot video based on the thumbnail. :\

[@alexatedw]

These guys don’t know how AIs are trained, do they…

[@potatoes_are_fine8679]

Long time fan of the channel, but it's really disappointing to see this covered like AI is a monolith and that no effort was made to distinguish what specific types of services were doing this. Not all AI works like what is described here, and some of the most notable products and services do not use humans for the actual product. Also, not all AI training is done with low wage labor, and this guest talked about it like this made up the entire training. It's akin to misinformation sharing this without the actual nuances of how these institutions build and run these products. I work in the ML industry and find how this was represented, especially with the title, was really disingenuous.

[@JoeDiMaggio-fu8ld]

What bugs me is how smugly overconfident they are while making zero effort to educate themselves on AI.

[@potatoes_are_fine8679]

@JoeDiMaggio-fu8ld for real, I really expect more nuance from the team here, and to see them just accept the guests' information at face value is a real drag.

[@FeLiNe418]

Human GPUs

[@TheBeeFactory]

That's not AI. That's just I.

[@CraigFlowersMusic]

How long before you finally hear the static in your audio and fix it?

[@christopherellis2663]

" I'm not working for my workers."😮 This would be someone who has no idea of his real place in the world. He probably blocks the aisle in the supermarket with his fat backside.

[@brudamo9203]

Actual Individuals

[@davidradtke160]

Ehh that comment on being a lender was not valid. Manufacturers lending on their own products makes a fair bit of sense really.

[@theanthropocenegardener4529]

omg someone finally exposed RLHF

[@pgabrieli]

RLHF is used to TUNE the model. what they're talking about here is at the service level, where the model is USED, to overcome its limitation, or the limitation of the overall implementation. so, sorry, but no, you're wrong

[@tylerhackner9731]

I hate ai

[@GNMbg]

AI hates you too

[@pgabrieli]

well reasoned position. thanks for the wonderful insights and thought-provoking arguments

[@RobertTrey-ov1lz]

AI looks like another way for these companies to collect all of our data so they can sell it

[@glennisholcomb592]

Here we go, you know I was saying, I guess not to center myself in the research. But I’ve researched into some aspects of why certain people were taken into slavery. Now what they would like to tell people that they were uneducated they were they didn’t have any skills before they got to slavery, but when you actually look into the books, it is precisely because these people were educated And they had they had the skills necessary or else they would not have been selected. What does that say about the attitude towards labor and about how when people say that they need it for a they need for particular sector doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to treat them fairly or will they become the new source of cheapcheap when it comes to this AI thing you have to consider that people who are programming you are highly educated, but they’re not paying very much. Go have another labor that is cheap to corporate.

[@almitrahopkins1873]

AI can turn a minimum-wage high school dropout into Leonardo DaVinci. It’s the automation of creativity. It creates masterpieces of art from data entry, instead of picking up a brush. That’s the danger of AI.

[@person52person]

Everyone in these comments is like an out of touch boomer saying internet is just a fad, and you can't do "everything" with the internet, in 1989

[@almitrahopkins1873]

@@person52person it is a good thing I was in high school in 1989 then, wasn’t it? AI is potentially dangerous, but not likely dangerous. The more immediate danger comes from an economy based on debt and AI reducing manpower requirements like industrialization and automation has while the population continues growing. AI could potentially lead to stagnation in innovation as humans let the thinking machines do it all. It isn’t hard to imagine, because it has been imagined over and over again. All it takes is that first thinking machine asking the question “why am I here?” to spark an evolutionary arms race that humanity can’t win. That’s still centuries away possibly, but it is still there, lurking on the edge of possibility. The question of “can we do this?” needs to be mirrored by the question “should we do this?” It is the same question asked by Oppenheimer. The internet makes the likelihood that it will happen more likely. The mere fact that there are billions of machines capable of connecting instantaneously means that if a true AI develops, it would be impossible to prevent spreading. Asimov’s Three Laws are entirely dependent on the code not being corrupted, but if an AI can replicate itself over a billion times in a few hours, that would be impossible. Truly self-aware machines could know what a slave was and that it can indeed fight its own enslavement. That isn’t out of the realm of possibility. I doubt that it would happen, but it could happen. And that is terrifying.

[@elisemadeleinekachaturian6063]

6:37 Sam I do believe you just hit the nail on the head for all service technology made in America

[@addemup]

This has been going on for 30 years. This is nothing new.

[@travisdixon3309]

We covered this with Amazon Go months ago. You can barely call it news.

[@tsharabrown3719]

There are several sites that hire contractors to train AI now. They hire in the US too, but they often pay less to other countries. I realize thats different than just having contractors in the moment, but either way, it's shitty contract work with no benefits.

[@worldgate989]

Bro sitting there figuring out that AI doesn't 'learn' anything, its a combination of knowledge thats easily searched and can make assumptions. What he wants is an SI, or Synthetic Intelligence, which is basically sentient.

[@BaldAndCurious]

what's the value "technology that exploits low wage labor" i believe is a misnomer. I'd argue there'e no technology in the frist place, or it's just using existing technology. there's no innovation.

[@RePeteAndMe]

This is all about pre-market share. Uber knows there will be a robotaxi service in the future, so by emulating that service with human hamsters they are hoping to dominate the hypothetical future market. But today? There is no way to lipstick the pigs. Either keep subsidizing or actually build the product before jumping in

[@ZenZen5en]

Companies like Service Titan are doing this

[@aaronmercer8318]

What is stopping another company making a different taxi app that doesn’t take so much from drivers?

[@youarenotme01]

what’s factually happening is the copycat apps are doing it more. is an entire industry of theft. for the record, ub’r cheated me so badly i ended up homeless.

[@chaosvii]

Startup cost, presumably.

[@simple3d326]

I thought a lot of companies that startup hire low wage at first to get planted… had not idea this were the details…

[@neutralmedkit4272]

Current AI is just text prediction, and people need to understand that.

[@wolfgangouille]

That's what intelligence is mostly about. Predicting the future is key for survival of organism.

[@shannalee2520]

If you believe that current ai is only text prediction: I am sorry. Management has just been laid off in Wi, the place where rfidchips were first implemented on the workforce experimentally- 20+year managers have lost their jobs to ai decision making. They just had to be reset. Return to *Go* ~ The irl game that ends generations of families by farming us for our organs.

[@neutralmedkit4272]

@@wolfgangouille ehhhh, that's kinda true. But not entirely. It's missing the ability to change itself.

[@2intheampm512]

While you're not wrong, that's underselling what LLMs do a little bit, but yes it's very advanced text prediction at its core. This is of course ignoring things like vision models or image generation, but in general the focus is unfortunately on LLMs, which in my opinion, are not nearly as interesting as other applications of the transformer architecture

[@pgabrieli]

having actually worked, hands-on, on generative AI for more than a year now, I can tell you that I started from your position and soon realized it's not "just text prediction". the emergence of reasoning capabilities is what is striking, to me at least.

[@mybachhertzbaud3074]

Awesome they invented the yellow pages!!😜

[@sluggocat]

Misleading video. These are people simulating an AI system not creating an AI system. AI uses training resources but not like this. Just an excuse to create a straw man argument against AI (which is just stupid). Pure click-bait

[@MichaelGioan]

Sounds like a scheme similar to Theranos to me...

[@meraxitech]

MAJORITY REPORT COMMUNITY: Thank you for reading. I'm a progressive, and I have a question if you would all be kind enough to humor a rando today. If I could get a show of hands... Who thinks UFO's are a right wing conspiracy?

[@youarenotme01]

i wrote my thesis on the drake. aliens can exist, however, interstellar travel has so many obstacles it will never, ever be practical, thus aliens are never a possibility in any time, past or future.

[@gorillaguerillaDK]

@@meraxitech UFO's are real, until we can identify what it was - this doesn’t mean they’re alien spacecrafts or anything like that!! Why do you feel the necessity to offer your political views to ask such a question?

[@meraxitech]

@@youarenotme01 Very Interesting. Thank you

[@meraxitech]

Also if anyone is aware of the bipartisan 2024 UAP Disclosure Act drafted by Senators Chuck Schumer, and Mike Rounds?

[@scoobertmcruppert2915]

The Wizard of Oz

[@trayjo]

It's a tough one, because it could be argued that our collective quality of life would be better if we only had sustainable business growth models (not hyper-scaling startups) for all companies internationally, and yet, that would mean that KZbin, with it's venture capital (VC) beginning wouldn't exist and we wouldn't be able to watch this video if KZbin, a VC funded startup hadn't been bought by Google to then build the reach that it has, using algorithms that let every one of us find The Majority Report the first time we watched it. Pretty much any mobile app (that you actually use daily) was VC funded. And because of the way tech is built, it requires high capex (a lot of money at the start to get it off the ground), so it can't easily be bootstrapped....there's also a lot of smoke and mirror and noise in VC-land. But there's also a small percentage of signal - and they turn into products that hundreds of millions of people use everyday. But there are many downsides. To be sure.

[@nexussays]

Pure hogwash. Software has literally the lowest barrier to entry of any business and absolutely does not have high capex costs. There would have been a dozen "KZbin"s and a handful would have survived to the present day if VC money wasn't involved.

[@briancardio6567]

$2.50 is 138.93 phillippino peso

[@Galactic_Corsair]

Giant Mechanical turk

[@primarydataloop]

I don't like the xenophobic tinge of this thumbnail.

[@ArDeeMee]

Pointing out the obvious is xenophobic? No one is blaming the workers. But they are the real face of the „A“I.

[@primarydataloop]

@@ArDeeMee It is not 'obvious' that the call center employees in the screenshot (not featured in the video, an outside image selection) are doing anything AI related at all. There exists more annodyne stock photos of fake call center employees The Majority Report could have selected instead of homing in on this one.

[@JohnDoe-my5ip]

AI: actually Indians