There is a group of people who comes from a different state, even different time zone, doing some repetitive but important tasks which enable the APPs more intelligent. For example, block inappropriate photos from the website, manually compare photos of Uber drivers and so on. Their job is not full time, with a low salary, and even the work opportunity is unstable. The author defines this type of work as ghost work. According to incomplete statistics, the number of these workers are still increasing. However, this type of work has no guarantees, no bonuses, no promotions, and the number of jobs is limited. Based on the investigation, there are various reasons that this group of people would like to be a ghost worker. For example, they don’t want to leave their family, they don’t want to be bundled by a full-time job, or they need good experience to show up on their resume. This book mainly demonstrates the research result on this booming work and the standard of living of these ghost workers. The author also indicates that even though Artificial Intelligence is getting prevalence now, the last mile between what humans can do and what robots can do is still large.
This chapter reminds me of another news that I read before which revealed a scam. There are some “technology companies” claim to be able to solve ransomware malware while actually just negotiate a ransom with hackers, and then charge their customers’ far more money than the ransom. The reason I thought about this news was that the scam was deceived in the name of technology. However, this news may not have much to do with ghost work, but there is a lot of news that some AI companies actually hire cheap staff to perform manual operations to make their products look smart, and I think this is not different from what the above scam did. Nevertheless, I am only discussing a very extreme case, just because it reminds me of the news that I saw. Compared with these events, what ghost workers have been done reflects more positive. I would consider what they did was made up of the last mile between humans and AI. Regarding of the Uber driver’s case, ghost workers only add manual recognition when the driver changes significantly and the machine cannot recognize it. We can blame it as immature, even “semi-AI” technology, but we can also treat this kind of work as part of AI work once we acknowledge the insurmountable last mile problem. Besides, think about the job opportunities provided for those bunch of people, think about the convenience and efficiency provided by ghost workers. I would rather consider these as a win-win strategy. Yet this win-win situation is established on the premise that AI technology is not mature enough, the unemployment rate is high, and society has sufficient demand for this type of work.
There is a more negative effect that we have talked about during the class, however, I would prefer to discuss from the perspective of people who need these jobs. There must be a reason for these jobs, the author already introduced the original of these works and the benefits of this mode of work. However, with the progress of society and the development of science and technology, how this working model will change is still unknown. We shouldn’t just see the immediate benefits without considering long-term development. Based on these, I would like to raise the following topics that can be discussed:
- How would you predict the future development of this working model?
- Attitude expression should be based on different perspectives and from different positions. What is your perspective?
- Based on your perspective, how do you evaluate the pros and cons of ghost work?
