{"id":101,"date":"2020-01-28T23:32:03","date_gmt":"2020-01-28T23:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724s20\/?p=101"},"modified":"2020-01-28T23:32:04","modified_gmt":"2020-01-28T23:32:04","slug":"01-22-2020-lee-lisle-ghost-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724s20\/2020\/01\/28\/01-22-2020-lee-lisle-ghost-work\/","title":{"rendered":"01\/22\/2020 – Lee Lisle – Ghost Work"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Ghost\nwork\u2019s introduction and first chapter cover a birds-eye look at the new gig\neconomy of crowd intelligence tasks. They cover several anecdotes of people\nworking on these tasks in various situations, mostly in the United States and\nIndia. The introduction also wants to get across that these types of tasks are\nfor problems that AI can\u2019t solve or needs training to be able to solve. The\ntext also tries to impart that there is nothing to fear from AI \u2013 automation\nhas always happened through new technologies and that there will always be more\nwork generated by the blind spots of the newer technologies. The first chapter\nthen goes through several different scenarios for these workers, starting with\nthe worst working conditions and then working up to the \u201cbest.\u201d Lastly, it\npointed out that there are possible moral issues with the whole setup, using a\nlawsuit of workers for a specific company arguing that they were essentially\nbeing paid minimum wage working full time with no benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Personal Reflection<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I thought\nit was interesting to better understand how these gig workers came into being\nand why they\u2019re needed.  However, I\ncouldn\u2019t stop thinking about the human element. Yes, the text seems to drive\nyou towards that direction, but it\u2019s not until the last 2-3 pages of the book\nthat it ever actually asks the question \u201cIs this right?\u201d The first few specific\nanecdotes in the first chapter were chilling \u2013 these were people with not just\nundergraduate degrees but post-graduate degrees who were working for a paycheck\nthat put them below the poverty line. Arguably only the last 2 companies\nmentioned, Upwork and Amara, were even close to acceptable living conditions.\nLeadGenius was close, as there were tiers and \u201cpromotions\u201d that could be earned\nthrough working, but they still seemed to pay very little for quality work.\nMTurk being the worst really outshone the others.  A talented worker as the example was, she was\nonly earning $16,000 a year working (according to the intro) 10 hours a day,\nand she was happy it was better than the $4,400 she earned the first year. The\ntext even (insultingly) points out $4400 is more than earning $0. Futhermore,\nworking as an mTurk required additional work to figure out what good HITs would\nopen and what requesters to avoid as well as learn the tips and tricks of the\ntrade. At least in a Starbucks you get paid the full amount during your\ntraining. This text and the whole ghost work gig-economy industry feels like\nshare-cropping, where the workers are cheated out of their proper valuation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Questions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. How could the ghost-work\/gig-economy be regulated? Is self-regulation as shown by the mechanical turk forums and reddits enough?<\/li>
  2. Now knowing what life is like for these workers, could you ethically use this service? Are the rosy-stories of \u201cI can fill in gaps on my resume\u201d or \u201cI can\u2019t work standard hours so the flexibility is nice\u201d or \u201cI have another source of income so this is just free money\u201d enough to counteract the underpayment of these workers?<\/li>
  3. Which of the businesses that setup gig-workers seems like the best tradeoff for requesters and workers? Why?<\/li>
  4. What do you think about the idea of having to screen “employers” on Mechanical Turk? How can this impact the pay rate?<\/li><\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Summary             Ghost work\u2019s introduction and first chapter cover a birds-eye look at the new gig economy of crowd intelligence tasks. They cover several anecdotes of people working on these tasks in various situations, mostly in the United States and India. The introduction also wants to get across that these types of tasks are for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,19],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class1","tag-ghostwork"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724s20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724s20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724s20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724s20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724s20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724s20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724s20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions\/104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724s20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724s20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724s20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}