MIND newsletter: Ethical AI, labor exploitation, and humanity
Happy Saturday everyone! 😉
I’m not exaggerating when saying that for the last several months 80% of media content, no matter if it’s a podcast, an article, a social media post, or a Youtube video, is about ChatGPT and AI.
What’s frustrating me is how many people are, excitedly, welcoming this new tool without interrogating a single thing about the underlying concept of AI development and practice.
If zooming out, perhaps the question shouldn’t be whether AI will reduce or create jobs. It is kind of already doing both, unfortunately with costly consequences to underserved communities.
Let’s take a step back, shall we?
A world fantasized in those fictional movies where sentient machines coexist with humans seems cool, right? Or frightening? Ironically we are losing our empathy on the way of developing a machine with one.
Labor exploitation and ethical development of AI
I had a conversation with my friends not long ago about social media content moderators. I still remember my first reaction when learning about the dark side of a moderator’s life. Feeling ashamed of being so ignorant I guess? Despite content moderators being the bodyguards of the internet – our bodyguards, they often end up with low pay, mental illnesses, suicide, and being treated just like a machine to feed AI. And the story goes very far, and wide, across so many industries that we could hardly imagine.
"large corporations claiming to be “AI first” are fueled by this army of underpaid gig workers”
“While the public is distracted by the specter of nonexistent sentient machines, an army of precarized workers stands behind the supposed accomplishments of artificial intelligence systems today.”
A lot of labor practices have already gone so badly due to AI. But maybe it’s not AI development and deployment that pushes people to such circumstances. It’s our own ignorance when blindly supporting such development without fully understanding the unjust labor conditions that unethical AI is accelerating.
“There is no such thing as good AI, only good and bad humans”
Educating ourselves about what is going on with AI is the first step toward our professional development in a world in that AI is considered the most important technology development of our time.
But another important thing – let’s not forget the core of humanity – is the work on our emotional intelligence. A machine perhaps one day can become angry. “But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way” (Aristotle), I think only we, humans, have that competitive advantage in the job market.
References and resources:
- Statement from the listed authors of Stochastic Parrots on the “AI pause” letter (dair-institute.org)
- The Exploited Labor Behind Artificial Intelligence (noemamag.com)
- Gods in the machine? The rise of AI may result in new religions – Big Think
- Let’s base AI debates on reality, not extreme fears about the future (theconversation.com)
- AI: Can artificial intelligence ever be ethical or moral? | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)
