This is a weird article. It starts with an anecdote about someone extremely poor who <i>really</i> needs some money, and how that person found a job with flexible hours and comfortable working conditions which paid relatively well. And then the article acts like this is obviously a horrible scandal that must be stopped.<p>Even if the allegations of "traumatizing content" are true and not exaggerated cherry-picking, shouldn't the decisions here be made by the people actually involved? When well-meaning, well-fed people take away their choices (and income), this isn't exactly doing them a favor.
If there's one Big Lie in the AI field, it's the idea that the models just "learn things" as if we invented magic that eats raw text and images and poops out intelligence. Not nearly enough attention is paid to the labeling and filtering infrastructure used to produce the datasets, a lot of which is human labor or derivatives thereof[0].<p>The fact that this labor is being offloaded to third-world kids who know how to steal their parents ID to earn beer money^W^W0.69 bobux is also a scandal, but it's the boring, frustratingly mundane kind that is common to all "gig economy" companies. Surely, not every kid is being permanently damaged by this exploitation, and there's certainly worse exploitation out there, but it's still exploitation. And these AI models aren't AI, they're products of lots of human labeling and filtering.<p>[0] e.g. reward modeling
I wasn't sure if I wanted to throw my two cents into this comment section, but here goes...<p>I'm absolutely astounded that anyone is framing the concept of taking advantage of the vulnerable and exposing them to this kind of material for such meager pay as an opportunity for them.<p>This is slave labor and exploitation, regardless of whether or not the person in question is or is not a child by legal classification and whether or not the pay is above average for someone in their situation.<p>It makes me sick to my stomach that we are once again achieving "progress" at the expense of vulnerable people.
"even a nude body from a Renaissance-style painting." Well, if that was the worst they had to see... At that age (15), I was studying these paintings in school. How is this problematic?
> <i>15-year-old Hassan... region of Pakistan.</i><p>That is not underage work in Pakistan! "Respected" jurnalists should bother to do minimal research! I wish I had similar gig, instead of working for 50 cents/hour at building site!<p>> <i>Article 11.3 of the Constitution of Pakistan says " No child below the age of fourteen years shall be engaged in any factory or mine or any other hazardous employment.</i><p><a href="https://paycheck.pk/labour-laws/fair-treatment/minors-and-youth" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://paycheck.pk/labour-laws/fair-treatment/minors-and-yo...</a>
I frankly find the idea that we must shield adolescents from any form of work... just pretty bizarre.<p>There are some dangerous jobs out there, and I can perhaps accept the argument that most 15 year olds don't have the agency to sign up for that - although as a matter of practicality, having grown up poor, I know a lot of people who ended up better off working the kinds of jobs that journalists and the regulators now frown upon.<p>You can make abstract arguments about how in a post-scarcity utopia, no person should ever have to work. But we're not there now and you don't get there by preventing people from working <i>before</i> that vision of a 3D-printed, AI-based future can be realized.<p>For now, work is inevitable for most; so what's wrong about being paid a living wage for classifying content in front of your computer on your own schedule? As a teenager, I'd have loved that. And I was exposed to content far more vile than anything this gig could've thrown at me.
I grew up in the US. I have had a W2 sense I was 13. I could not think of anything better that I would have wanted to do when I was 13. I leaned so much and had a ton of fun.<p>The notion that “work” is bad has got to go.
The purpose of this article is to be linked in a long Gish Gallop of AI harms (you know the type) and this one is supposed to be under the link "underage workers" so as to give people who skim that future article a sense of outrage, and oh look it has a link so it must be true!