https://www.wired.com/story/prisoners-training-ai-finland/
In high-wage Finland, where clickworkers are rare, one company has discovered a novel labor force—prisoners.
This is neither novel, nor morally acceptable. People that do this work usually end up traumatized for life, because of the fucked up shit they often have to look at. Prisoners are not really in a position to negotiate, meaning you can push this work on them in a sort of non consentual way that is below what modern society should strive for.
If you actually really the article, she's parsing real estate news articles.
Most AI jobs do not involve CP.
Rule number 1 on Reddit is: “never read the article “
I guess that still applies here.
Rule 2: “disagree with everyone”
Rule 3: “You’re always right”
Rule 4: “everyone else is always wrong“
I’m sure there are lots of other rules, but that should get anyone started in the modern social media.
Unfortunately one major sector of image machine learning is CSAM scanning, which was also recently revealed as one of the major funding parties for the planned legislation intended to allow scanning all private communication in the EU. But generally i agree most of the things they will see might not be too bad by themselves but its still a job no human really wants to do of their own free will. If they do decide to do it, it is either out of a lack of choice or because they dont know what they are getting themselves into.
Prisoners are not really in a position to negotiate, meaning you can push this work on them in a sort of non consentual way that is below what modern society should strive for
Well the article does mention that the prisoner "Marmalade" was not forced to do any of this.
In fact the article mentions that she could have spend her time in her cell, doing online courses or doing chores for the prison for little cash. The fact that wired managed to just book an interview with the prisoner also makes it quite risky for the company to subject the prisoners to any traumatizing material.
The only problem I really see with this is the fact that this doesn't really prepare the prisoners for live outside the prison in any way.
Forgive me for not trusting in the investigative journalism capabilities of fucking "wired". How much of a choice that person really had is not something u can judge from an outside perspective. If they made this the highest paying jobs then there is no real choice probably.
Maybe put less energy into deciding you're offended off the bat, and more energy actually reading articles
We can make fairly accurate assumptions on prisoners rights simply based on the fact that the prison is located in Finland. Here's article from Yle (one of the most trusted news organizations in Finland) describing finnish prisons.
Damn, Finland about to find out how to create a powerful prison system for cheap labor!
Took a page right out of America.
The article gives a really nice perspective on how morally questionable this is.
The company gets cheap, Finnish-speaking workers, while the prison system can offer inmates employment that, [the company] says, prepares them for the digital world of work after their release.
Yeah sure, doing more data labelling? I highly doubt data labelling gives anyone any skill besides date labelling. Luckily this article doesn't just accept the statement of the company, but questions it very critically.
Hey, that's not fair. What if there's a boom in companies that need to know if it's a hot dog or not in the next 10 years?
It's a bullshit sales speech but it doesn't sound morally questionable to me. It's little pay and mindnumbing work for sure, but also you volunteer for it so, eh, seems fine
It's not slave labor. It's something entirely new, unnamed, and good for our local Earth based business owners.
It's only slave labor if it's from the French region of slavé, this is just sparkling prison labour.
"Fun" fact. One finnish content moderation AI service was founded by a far-right party member (and an ex-cop to boot). Not surprisingly, the forums and yellow press comment fields the system "moderates" are known to be filled with racism and other hate speech.
(Utopia Analytics and Tom Packalén if someone wants to search for more)