"A significant share of the world’s “AI janitors” are low-wage workers tasked with labelling data, moderating disturbing content, and sanitizing AI outputs for global platforms often for less than $2 an hour and under gruelling conditions. The “magic” of AI, it turns out, is propped up by invisible labour in developing countries, whose health and well-being suffer as they review hateful, violent, or sensitive material to train or fix algorithms."
The Human Cost of Artificial Intelligence: Stories from the Digital Mines
Fasica fled war in Ethiopia, only to face digital trauma earning $1.50/hour training Facebook’s AI.
For eight hours a day, seated in a crowded office in Nairobi under constant CCTV surveillance, she watched humanity's darkest moments unfold on her screen
By Uchechukwu Ajuzieogu
https://aylgorith.com/49bk
@gerrymcgovern $1.50/hr ≈ KSh 240/hr ⇒ ≈ KSh 19,200/day (8 h) or ≈ KSh 384,000/month (40 h × 4 weeks).
The official minimum wage in Nairobi is KSh 16,114/month, so this is 24× higher than the minimum.
But the average monthly salary in Kenya is around KSh 80,000, so this equates to roughly 5× the average wage locally.
Thus, $1.50/hr is excellent local pay, well above both minimum and average.
@chris Countries whose economies have been destroyed by Western imperialism now offer excellent slave wages to Big Tech. Advance your career by destroying your mental health as you watch European stabbings and USA child rape and murder. Perfect capitalism
Setting aside for one moment that these countries' economies were devastated by decades of socialist rule; the fact remains that whatever the cause, the past cannot change and those workers today can do nothing else but choose the best of their available options.
Wishing they had better options does not help them. Trying to pressure companies in to removing their current best option will only leave them with worse options remaining. And we know axiomatically that this job is their best available option because if there were better options open to them they would go do those things instead.
So you are actually advocating to make some of the world's poorest people's lives worse. That's pretty rude.
@nicholas @gerrymcgovern
It’s uncomfortable, but true: many post-colonial states haven’t become Wakanda. Removing imperial powers didn’t guarantee stability or prosperity. Too often, socialism, warlords, corruption, or weak institutions stalled progress, even with vast resources. The tragedy isn’t colonists leaving—it’s that independence alone doesn’t build capacity, accountability, or growth.
@chris
The colonialists and imperialist never left. Any country that tried for equality and decency got immediately couped by CIA or some European government (now China's in on the act). The mining oligarchs, etc., are the new imperialists. Must have our cheap resources. Otherwise, capitalist model doesn't work.
@nicholas
Always hilarious when big government authoritarians blame the ills of big government authoritarianism on 'capitalism'. Capitalism is the free market, it doesn't need government force to work, its very definition is the absence of government interfering in the trade of goods and services amongst willing adults. In fact, the most brutal regimes in the history of the world were formed explicitly to eradicate capitalism, but the incentive for people to voluntarily work together to their mutual benefit is so strong it found a way to survive in the midst of Stalin's USSR, the Khmer Rouge, Mao's China, and North Korea, despite staggering penalties if caught. Supply and demand is not 'an economic system' that can be discarded like a suit that has fallen out of fashion; it is a law of nature as immutable as gravity.
@wowaname @chris @nicholas @gerrymcgovern Lately, I've been thinking that those "Late Stage techniques" are a result of the Ford v Dodge ruling which requires all publicly-traded companies to prioritize shareholders above all else. Just look how Valve is able to prioritize long-term growth because they are not publicly traded. Honestly, I think the situation would be much better if the Ford v Dodge ruling was repealed, even though I think it's unlikely to happen anytime soon.
The ford dodge thing is kind of dumb because you can always argue that you're "building brand value" and that's basically impossible to say you're not. All of the stupid ESG / DEI stuff is done under the "brand value" banner.
The reason for enshittification is because stock market investors want to flip a quick buck so if your earnings report doesn't show you're making a ton of money right now, they're gonna chuck you on the side of the road and go look for something else to gamble on.
Thing is, investors watch those quarterly reports, and so if you want investors to like you, you still have to book maximum short term profits.
Arguably though, "want investors to like you" is simping so that's the actual problem.
>Don't read into it too much
i'm not really. i mentioned consumerism because brands have become a sort of language to these loyal zombies who will just buy bullshit without consideration for decrease in quality over time. i thought that was in agreement with what you're saying
The shareholder duty thing does come up, but only when you're doing really egregious stuff like funneling money out of the company to completely unjustifiable side projects.
@cjd @nicholas @wowaname @xianc78 @gerrymcgovern
I'm sure Bugatti pays well.
Yup, enshitification is literally the law, but muh capitalisms!
Also note that the limited liability corporate structure itself is a government fiction (invented by the British government for the east india company), not a market innovation. There is no capitalist mechanism to privatize profits while socializing liability, so in a true free market you would probably not even have megacorps to begin with, because the liability load would be a natural limiting factor.