AI took their jobs. Now they get paid to make it sound human

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240612-the-people-making-ai-sound-more-human

by gortok • 2 years ago

50 57 2 years ago

lkramer2• 2 years ago

As a developer, this is kinda where I fear ending up: a glorified editor of crummy AI generated code for a pittance. At that point I'll probably check out of the industry.

digdugdirk• 2 years ago

That's the interesting thought though - what happens to the industry (and all the other creative industries affected) after everyone like you checks out?

InDubioProRubio2• 2 years ago

Performance death by over-performance of code-generators? After that? Rejuvenation of dying systems by constantly generated new systems. Also selling retro software in containers cause it "works"..

paxys• 2 years ago

If companies are releasing shit products then you pick up a laptop and compete with them. That's always how things have gone in the tech industry.

carschno• 2 years ago

Keep in mind that companies do not necessarily aim to increase efficiency but to de-professionalize. It will be easier to find these "glorified editors" that require minimal education, than current software developers. Consequently, this will make them more replaceable and hence they will have a worse negotiation position when it comes to working conditions etc.

It is an old pattern, see for instance: https://www.versobooks.com/products/688-breaking-things-at-w...

guappa5• 2 years ago

I think it's harder to verify obscure code than to write it in the first place.

I've seen perfectly legit looking code generated by chatgpt, except that the value of the constants were wrong.

When you have to verify every single little thing, it's easier to just do it. And certainly doesn't take any less skill.

jprete2• 2 years ago

Companies always want to commodify their complements, right? I wonder if there's a framing where the employees are one of the complements.

fsndz5• 2 years ago

True. Some people argue that we are quickly moving from a creator economy to a verifier economy. AI generates a bunch of crap and knowledge workers have to verify and edit (https://www.lycee.ai/blog/the-rise-of-the-verifier-economy)

bheadmaster2• 2 years ago

Some people argue that we are quickly moving from a creator economy to a verifier economy.

I wonder if this is a natural development of economic optimization.

Computability theory taught us that it is in general easier to verify that an answer is correct (P) than to come up with the answer in the first place (NP).

misja111• 2 years ago

This is not much different than being the senior developer managing an outsourced team of developers.

kombookcha2• 2 years ago

"According to Cowart, many of the same freelance writing platforms that have AI detection software in place are simultaneously hiring people to edit content produced by chatbots. That means in some corners of the copywriting ecosystem, almost everything revolves around efforts to avoid the appearance of artificial intelligence.

"They're selling AI content and paying you to fix it, and at the same time they're sending you emails about how to write like a human so you don't trigger their AI detector," Cowart says. "It's so insulting." Worse, the detectors are regularly updated to keep up with ongoing changes from the companies who make AI chatbots, which means the rules about what might get your writing flagged as AI constantly shift. "It's frustrating, because there are a million ways to say the same thing in English, but which one is more human? I don't like the guessing," she says."

Infinite AI slop getting churned out and people getting paid a pittance to make it sound less like AI, in order to trick other people who are actively working to not be fed the slop. What an absurd and depressing state of affairs.

eszed• 2 years ago

actively working to not be fed the slop

By using AI-powered search to summarize everything the AIs generated! I now understand the AI gold-rush.

Dear God, what a dystopian future we're creating. "Information super-highway" was a more-apt metaphor than I ever thought, way back when: as we all know by now, induced demand ends up in grid-lock.

kombookcha2• 2 years ago

It's such an aggressively obnoxious way for huge swaths of infrastructure to become useless wastelands of generative nonsense that I would have been amused if I'd read it in Snow Crash.

Billions of dollars and rare minerals and manpower all going towards drowning the greatest communication tool in human history in noise. It's like kessler syndrome for the internet, except we are actively spending money to make it happen.

What a pointless, useless waste.

michaelt• 2 years ago

Today, jobseekers are submitting AI-written resumes to resume-filtering AIs used by employers.

But why stop there? I dream of a future where not only do we fully automate the tedious process of playing golf, we also automate the tedious process of watching professional golf.

pydry• 2 years ago

Meanwhile countries like China are building real assets like high speed rail and the world's richest industrial ecosystem while hooking us on it.

This is because they don't instinctively follow a principle of "market always knows best".

They might be live in a dictatorship instead of a fake democracy rigged by the rich, but materially, their lives will probably be better than ours in a few decades.

guappa5• 2 years ago

It's economics!

Farmers plant trees, then cut them down, then send to a paper mill, then they get printed, then they travel hundreds of km to be spam ads in my mailbox, then I have to put them in the garbage. Then (supposedly) they go on to become paper again, travelling hundreds of km again in the process, or most likely are burnt for heat in the city garbage disposal.

All of this shows the rich people that our country is doing well and they should invest more, to produce even more spam!

Isn't capitalism amazing?

okr2• 2 years ago

What has capitalism to do with it? It is just division of labor. And upgrading products so they become other products. And i think its fantastic. Because, to be honest, i dont know how to cut trees, how to shredder them, how to make paper out of it, so i can finally apply my skill to draw advertisement on the spam, that you receive.

(Reminds me of old communist days, where you get some gray paper. I was so happy when i got that shiny reflective paper from wrigleys i could glue to my matchbox!:)

cchi_co• 2 years ago

AI can produce text, but it still needs human intervention yet still how much time will pass before this necessity also disappears?

guappa5• 2 years ago

~∞

vouaobrasil4• 2 years ago

A lot of people say that AI would create new jobs™. And perhaps it will. But the resulting jobs follow a general trend of technology making new jobs: the jobs themselves are more meaningless (from a human conceptual point of view) doing things that are increasingly degrading and far away from our basic instincts. And the resulting products/services seem to be reaching the anti-ideal of "optimize people for squeezing other people dry" rather than for creating any real increase in the overall good.

Personally, I wish computer scientists as a group would have been wise enough to leave AI technology alone and never invent it.

simonw• 2 years ago

Presumably you mean generative AI here? Other forms of AI (machine learning etc) have been around for decades.

vouaobrasil4• 2 years ago

Yes, generative AI. But machine learning and neural networks were the precursors to this sort of research, so I prefer to put AI into one pile, whose ultimate aim is to make a machine work more like a human.

vundercind3• 2 years ago

“Computers can now perform a bunch more tasks for us.”

”How wonderful! Now that you’ve automated away a bunch of soul-crushing drudgery, we can focus on fulfilling work, like writing and making art!”

“…”

“… you automated away the drudgery, right?”

vouaobrasil4• 2 years ago

Haha. A lot of people say that. But as an artist myself, I think automating too much can actually lead to sterility in art as well. It's a matter of moderation. Complete automation leads to bad art.

fsndz5• 2 years ago

True, the jobs created by AI often seem to prioritize efficiency over meaning, leading to a sense of detachment from human purpose.

pizza234• 2 years ago

But the resulting jobs follow a general trend of technology making new jobs

"Technology making new jobs" didn't start yesterday; it started at least a couple of centuries ago. And I take you, or even people with a meaningless job, wouldn't swap their job for sweeping chimneys or making matchsticks.

Even if we don't go so far, taking for example game development, nowadays, thanks to many improvements both in HW and SW, the barrier to entrance has decreased considerably, and people can produce (small) masterpieces even with low software engineering skills.

Here's Carmack talking tangentially about the topic: https://youtu.be/YOZnqjHkULc.

vouaobrasil4• 2 years ago

Not sure why you resort to making the only alternative "sweeping chimneys or making matchsticks". There were plenty of other jobs back then that weren't menial.

sham1• 2 years ago

And just like that, the alienation of labour becomes evermore present.

Of course, this kind of process that abstracts away meaning and creativity from the work has been a thing for a while. After all, similar observations were already being made even by Karl Marx during the 19th century, and it'd be weird if similar stuff couldn't happen with regards to generative AI.

Of course, the way this works nowadays is substantially different than how it would have been for 1800s factory workers, but similar ideas and trends can certainly be seen here.

As for the idea that computer scientists should just had a self-imposed moratorium on things like generative AI, I'm sceptical that it could have ever worked. And now the cat is already out of the bag, so we get to enjoy the consequences. AI slop and all.

soco• 2 years ago

Even the title of this article is misleading. It sounds like the copywriters would be now doing the "humanizing" job but no, only ONE of them does that, while the other 59 were already kicked out.

meiraleal• 2 years ago

We fed the big tech that is screwing us for a profit. The funniest part of it is the amount of people here in HN that still come to Google, Amazon or Apple defense as they are hoping to not be laid off.

MisterSandman• 2 years ago

This article barely touched on Big Tech, and ChatGPT was not developed by Big Tech.

You have a problem with late-stage capitalism, not Big Tech.

ksp-atlas• 2 years ago

ChatGPT was developed by OpenAI, which is owned by Microsoft, a classic "Big Tech" company

fsndz5• 2 years ago

Great article. A bit in contrast with another report from the US that found AI did not have any impact on recruitment ? (https://www.lycee.ai/blog/ai-adoption-labor-market-ny-fed-su...) So what is the key takeaway here ?

lupire• 2 years ago

He led a team of more than 60 writers and editors, publishing blog posts and articles to promote a tech company that packages and resells data on everything from real estate to used cars.

His job was to generate spam.

AI took their jobs. Now they get paid to make it sound human

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