Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “digital labor”
do you want to be good or to be optimized?
- kudos:This Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic from yesterday spoke to me at a deep level: My first thoughts went to generative AI, an area in which I feel like a fetishization of optimization is crowding out really important questions of what is good. As I put it in a university survey earlier today, there are undeniable benefits to the use of AI tools, but there are important questions as to who benefits.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Amazon Turkers Who Train AI Say They’re Locked Out of Their Work and Money'
- kudos:Helpful reminder that it’s low-paid, underappreciated workers who contribute to AI as much as high-paid programmers and household-name executives. link to “Amazon Turkers Who Train AI Say They’re Locked Out of Their Work and Money”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Fanfiction Community Rocked By Etsy Sellers Turning Their Work Into Bound Books'
- kudos:This strikes me as illustrating the digital labor issues associated with generative AI. It’s someone else profiting off of one’s work. link to “Fanfiction Community Rocked By Etsy Sellers Turning Their Work Into Bound Books”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Tumblr and Wordpress to Sell Users’ Data to Train AI Tools'
- kudos:Aw, geez, and I liked Automattic, too. I get that financing Tumblr is hard, but why this? link to “Tumblr and Wordpress to Sell Users’ Data to Train AI Tools”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Reddit: 'We Are in the Early Stages of Monetizing Our User Base''
- kudos:There are few phrases grosser than “monetizing our user base.” link to “Reddit: ‘We Are in the Early Stages of Monetizing Our User Base’”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Reddit Signs $60 Million Deal to Scrape Your Online Community for AI Parts: Report'
- kudos:Look, I’ve never been really into Reddit, but I’m still really disappointed in the company. This sucks. link to “Reddit Signs $60 Million Deal to Scrape Your Online Community for AI Parts: Report”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Reddit sells training data to unnamed AI company ahead of IPO'
- kudos:C’mon, Reddit. link to “Reddit sells training data to unnamed AI company ahead of IPO”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'University of Michigan Sells Recordings of Study Groups and Office Hours to Train AI'
- kudos:This is straight-up awful. Shame on the university for doing this. link to “University of Michigan Sells Recordings of Study Groups and Office Hours to Train AI”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Cat and Girl'
- kudos:Generative AI has a digital labor issue, and we aren’t paying enough attention to it. link to “Cat and Girl”
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I have lots of concerns about LLM training, but I think it’s better to think of the issue in terms of digital labor, not copyright. My blog is licensed for reuse, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less exploitative for someone to scrape it all to develop software that will make them rich off my work.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Millions of Workers Are Training AI Models for Pennies | WIRED'
- kudos:Even more than AI’s potential to replace humans in the name of saving money, I think we need to talk about the way companies are exploiting humans to save money—so that it can train AI. link to “Millions of Workers Are Training AI Models for Pennies | WIRED”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Generative AI Is Making Companies Even More Thirsty for Your Data | WIRED'
- kudos:This is not a future I look forward to (or a present I want to live in). link to ‘Generative AI Is Making Companies Even More Thirsty for Your Data | WIRED’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Zoom Became a Part of Daily Life. It Needs to Tell Users Exactly How It's Using Their Data | WIRED'
- kudos:Lots of good stuff in here. link to ‘Zoom Became a Part of Daily Life. It Needs to Tell Users Exactly How It’s Using Their Data | WIRED’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Now you can block OpenAI’s web crawler - The Verge'
- kudos:This is a welcome step, but I’m concerned it’s an empty, distracting gesture—it certainly doesn’t solve the deeper issue. link to ‘Now you can block OpenAI’s web crawler - The Verge’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Zoom says its new AI tools aren’t stealing ownership of your content - The Verge'
- kudos:Zoom’s responses to this are meaningless, empty corporate speak. I’m not concerned about owning my content, I’m concerned about others using it while affirming my ownership. And yes, I “consent” to it in the sense that I use Zoom, but that is meaningless consent and Zoom knows it. What a garbage response. link to ‘Zoom says its new AI tools aren’t stealing ownership of your content - The Verge’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Cleaning Up ChatGPT’s Language Takes Heavy Toll on Human Workers - WSJ'
- kudos:Everyone excited about generative AI needs to account for this kind of thing. We don’t pay enough attention to digital labor and the dehumanizing aspects of content moderation. link to ‘Cleaning Up ChatGPT’s Language Takes Heavy Toll on Human Workers - WSJ’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'A Leaked Memo Shows TikTok Knows It Has a Labor Problem | WIRED'
- kudos:I think this is a much bigger deal than any purported security risk. link to ‘A Leaked Memo Shows TikTok Knows It Has a Labor Problem | WIRED’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Fanfic Sex Trope That Caught a Plundering AI Red-Handed | WIRED'
- kudos:This is a wild, compelling story that I missed when it first came out. Glad to be reading it now. link to ‘The Fanfic Sex Trope That Caught a Plundering AI Red-Handed | WIRED’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Reddit Won’t Be the Same. Neither Will the Internet | WIRED'
- kudos:Good focus on the digital labor aspects of this whole thing. I sympathize with Reddit for not wanting to provide free value for generative AI (this is one of the trickiest parts of that conversation), but Reddit’s users are right to balk at providing free value for the platform. link to ‘Reddit Won’t Be the Same. Neither Will the Internet | WIRED’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Reddit starts removing moderators behind the latest protests - The Verge'
- kudos:I’m glad this article points out how much unpaid work mods do to make Reddit a place people want to go. They arguably add more value to the platform than employees do, and this strikes me as a bad move. link to ‘Reddit starts removing moderators behind the latest protests - The Verge’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Reddit communities with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely - The Verge'
- kudos:What I appreciate about coverage of this from The Verge and Techdirt is the way that it draws attention to questions of digital labor. link to ‘Reddit communities with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely - The Verge’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Voice Actors Push Back Against Their Voices Being Used by AI'
- kudos:Interesting and important read. link to ‘Voice Actors Push Back Against Their Voices Being Used by AI’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'ChatGPT is a data privacy nightmare, and we ought to be concerned | Ars Technica'
- kudos:Important points in here. link to ‘ChatGPT is a data privacy nightmare, and we ought to be concerned | Ars Technica’
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Is there any way to complete a CAPTCHA without providing free labor for ML/AI developers? Makes me angrier every time I have to do it.
quoted again about Gas app in EducationWeek
- kudos:This week, Discord announced that it has acquired the Gas social media app popular among secondary students. Presumably in response, Alyson Klein ran an explainer today at EducationWeek on the subject of the app. In doing this, she re-ran a quote that I provided to her for a December article that she also wrote: “It feels a little exploitative to me,” said Spencer Greenhalgh, an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky’s school of information sciences.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour: Exclusive | Time'
- kudos:Looks like the job of AI training is as awful as the job of content moderation. link to ‘OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour: Exclusive | Time’
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I’ve seen jokes about the supposed irony of having to fill out a CAPTCHA to use ChatGPT, but it’s actually pretty consistent: The purpose of CAPTCHA is also to mine the fruits of human labor to train ML/AI that can replace human labor.
quoted in EducationWeek about 'Gas' social media app
- kudos:A few weeks ago, thanks to a recommendation from my colleague and friend Josh Rosenberg, I was contacted by Alyson Klein at EducationWeek to talk about the “Gas” social media app that’s become popular among high schoolers lately. Klein’s article was published last night, and I was happy to see that I’d been quoted in the article. To be honest, I wasn’t familiar with the app before Klein reached out, but it only took a few minutes of research for me to figure out that I didn’t like it very much.
some thoughts on Gab pushback against research on Gab
- kudos:I’m not going to link to it, but I am fascinated by a recent post on the Gab blog where Andrew Torba announced some new features to help Gab users push back against research on the platform. Not only do I have two or three ongoing projects using Gab data (one is in the very, very early stages and—ironically—uses Gab blog posts), but some of what Torba wrote also aligned with some of the (fortunately mild) trolling my co-author, Amy Chapman, and I have experienced because of my work on the far-right-influenced DezNat hashtag in Mormon Twitter.
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If dozens of CAPTCHAs are any indication, Google’s working hard on traffic lights, crosswalks, and fire hydrants today. So proud of all I’m contributing to AI without compensation because it’s the only way to access this site.