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Mobile Syrup

Kenyan workers making less than $2/hour helped make ChatGPT safe for public use

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is an impressive tool, but like many impressive technology products, it has a dark side. A recent Time investigation found that OpenAI used outsourced Kenyan labourers earning less than $2 USD (about $2.67 CAD) to help make ChatGPT less toxic.

The Time piece is long but well worth the read — you can find it here. Time reports that ChatGPT’s predecessor, GPT-3, was a tough sell because it was prone to blurting out violent, sexist, and racist remarks. (ChatGPT is based on GPT-3.5.) The main reason GPT-3 was so toxic was that OpenAI trained it using the internet. One the one hand, the internet is a vast repository of human language. On the other, it’s chock-full of awful content — content picked up in the training of tools like GPT-3. To solve the problem, OpenAI pursued building an AI-powered safety mechanism to stop its chatbots from regurgitating the toxic material.

Time reports that OpenAI took a page out of Facebook’s playbook, since the company had already shown it was possible to build AI-powered tools to detect toxic language like hate speech. However, instead of detecting toxic language to remove from a social media platform, OpenAI needed to scrub it from its training data.

To build that AI system, OpenAI needed to label different types of toxic speech to train the AI on. Enter Sama, a San Francisco-based firm that employs workers in Kenya, Uganda, and India to label data for Silicon Valley clients like Google, Facebook’s parent company Meta, and Microsoft. Sams bills itself as an “ethical AI” company.

Starting in November 2021, OpenAI sent tens of thousands of text snippets to Sama that seemed pulled straight from the darkest recesses of the internet. Per Time, some of it described child sexual abuse, bestiality, murder, suicide, torture, self-harm, and incest in graphic detail. Sama paid data labellers a take-home wage of between $1.32 and $2 USD per hour, depending on seniority and performance.

It’s worth noting that OpenAI doesn’t disclose the names of its outsourcing partners, and it’s not clear whether OpenAI used other data labelling firms alongside Sama for the project. OpenAI did confirm in a statement to Time that Sama employees in Kenya contributed to its toxic content detection tool that eventually became part of ChatGPT. Moreover, OpenAI stressed that the work was a “necessary step in minimizing the amount of violent and sexual content included in training data.”

According to documents reviewed by Time, OpenAI signed three contracts with Sama in late 2021. In total, the contracts were worth about $200,000 USD (roughly $267,309 CAD). However, the traumatic nature of the work eventually resulted in Sama cancelling its work for OpenAI in February 2022, eight months earlier than planned.

It’s worth noting that ChatGPT’s popularity has been a massive boon for OpenAI, spurring things like a multibillion-dollar investment from Microsoft. OpenAI is even aiming to launch a roughly $56/mo CAD ‘Professional’ tier of ChatGPT.

Some Sama workers spoke anonymously with Time about the work, with one describing some of the content viewed as torture and mentally scarring. Employees were entitled to attend sessions with “wellness” counsellors, but those that spoke with Time said the sessions didn’t help. Moreover, high productivity demands meant the sessions were rare. Some were only given the opportunity to join group sessions, and one employee said requests for a one-on-one session were repeatedly denied.

The contracts revealed that OpenAI would pay an hourly rate of $12.50 to Sama for the work, significantly more than what the employees actually took home. A Sama spokesperson told Time that the $12.50 rate “covers all costs, like infrastructure expenses, and salary and benefits for the associates and their fully-dedicated quality assurance analysts and team leaders.”

An OpenAI spokesperson told Time that the company didn’t issue productivity targets and said Sama was responsible for managing payments and mental health provisions. The spokesperson also said that OpenAI understood Sama would offer one-to-one counselling and that workers could opt out of any work without penalization.

Despite the collapse of OpenAI’s contract with Sama, a need for human labour in tech, especially AI, remains. Time spoke with AI ethicist Andrew Strait, who warned that ChatGPT and similar systems rely on “massive supply chains of human labour and scraped data, much of which is unattributed and used without consent.” As impressive as ChatGPT is, it’s emblematic of larger, foundational problems in the AI space.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Source: Time

Categories
Potins

Bradley Cooper, Emma Watson among most influential

Bradley Cooper, Julianne Moore and Emma Watson have been named on this year’s TIME 100.

The news magazine will publish its annual list of the most influential people in the American world later today (04.16.15) but ‘Entertainment Tonight’ have revealed the three stars, along with ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ actor Chris Pratt and director Lee Daniels have made the cut for 2015.

And ‘American Sniper’ star Bradley felt honored to be included.

He said: ”It’s a real big thing to be included in anything that has to do with TIME magazine let alone the 100 list!

”It’s a huge privilege for me and if it does anything at all it helps spread awareness for veterans’ issues.”

The 40-year-old actor’s friend Oliver Platt profiled him for the publication, writing the star’s main priorities are

”his dog Charlotte, the Philadelphia Eagles and showing up for people he cares about.”

Meanwhile, filmmaker Lee was praised by his ‘Butler’ actress Oprah Winfrey.

She said: ”It seems like there is nothing Lee can’t do.”

For Lee, his placing on the list shows a big status shift from the way he was treated as a child.

He recalled:”I learned to not go to the bathroom from the time that I was in kindergarten thru 6th grade because I was too afraid to go into the bathroom. That’s how bullied I was.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin is the winner of this year’s TIME 100 reader’s poll, but the identity of the person in the top spot on the official list has not yet been unveiled.

Categories
Musique

Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs best album of 2010

In the last month of the year, it’s traditional for the music industry to start compiling their “best of” lists. Whether it’s NME, Rolling Stone, MTV, Spin or even Time magazine, every list is different.

However, one of these sites, NME.com, had the ingenious idea of merging the lists from all these sites and, using a points system ranging from 20 for first place to one point for the twentieth place, and created an aggregated top 20 list.

In all, fifteen lists from the most popular sites were combined and, ultimately, the final result means that the real best album of 2010 is The Suburbs by Arcade Fire.

With The Suburbs being the only album to appear on every single one of the 15 “best of” lists, the Montreal group managed to stay ahead of Kanye West’s My Beautiful Twisted Dark Fantasy. Ironically, The Suburbs was named album of the year on only three of the lists while Kanye West’s album won that honour on seven of them.

Aggregate list of the 10 best albums of 2010:

1. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
2. Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
3. LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening
4. The National – High Violet
5. Beach House – Teen Dream
6. Vampire Weekend – Contra
7. These New Puritans – Hidden
8. Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest
9. Big Boi – Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
10. The Black Keys – Brothers

 

Categories
Musique

Lady Gaga tops the list

It wasn’t so long ago that Lady Gaga came to lip sync on Star Académie. Now one of the most reputable magazines around names her the most influential person in the artistic world right now.

Lady Gaga just turned 24 last month and beat out funny man Conan O’Brien, Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow, talk show host Oprah Winfrey and many others for top spot on the Time 100 list.

Time magazine asked Cindy Lauper to share her impressions of Lady Gaga. Lauper wrote, "When I see somebody like Gaga, I sit back in admiration. I’m inspired to pick up the torch again myself. I did an interview with her once, and she showed up with a sculpture on her head. I thought, ‘How awesome.’"

Vampire heartthrob Robert Pattinson is on the list as well. His Twilight Saga: New Moon director Chris Weitz wrote: "We haven’t seen a tenth of what he can do onscreen. I love you, Rob! Call me!" Pattinson has talked about embarking on a music career in the future as well so look out world!

 

Categories
Potins

Time Releases Its Top 100

Several of the world’s biggest personalities have been named on the list, which was on newsstands today.

In total, there are 71 men and 29 women from 27 different countries on the list.  Among the celebrities are Justin Timberlake, Leonardo DiCaprio, Rosie O’Donnell, Sacha Baron Cohen, Oprah Winfrey, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Tyra Banks, Cate Blanchett, America Ferrera, Tina Fey, John Mayer, Brian Williams and Michael J. Fox.

American President George W. Bush did not make the list.

Categories
Cinéma

The Best 100 Films of All Time

Richard Schickel and Richard Corliss have compiled the alphabetical list, which was published Sunday.  Older films and newer films have made the ranks, including Lawrence of Arabia, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Finding Nemo and City of God.  You may not agree with the list, but the critics say that was their goal.

They wanted to create a list that would inspire discussions, and even disagreements.  They hope that people will be talking about the movies, and sharing what they love about the cinema.

The most popular director on the list was Martin Scorcese, who had three films listed.  The actor who appeared the most times was Robert DeNiro, who was in 5 of the movies on the list.

To see the complete list of the 100 Best Films of All Time, click here.