{"id":68,"date":"2020-01-27T13:02:36","date_gmt":"2020-01-27T13:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724s20\/?p=68"},"modified":"2020-01-27T13:02:37","modified_gmt":"2020-01-27T13:02:37","slug":"01-22-20-runge-yan-ghost-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724s20\/2020\/01\/27\/01-22-20-runge-yan-ghost-work\/","title":{"rendered":"01\/22\/20 \u2013 Runge Yan \u2013 Ghost Work"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What is Ghost work?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the shadow of emerging AI technology and its applications, millions of workers find tasks on online platforms and earn their paycheck by contributing in \u201chuman computation\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These tasks connect end users and machine as an “API”. The work process is totally invisible to the users, yet their contribution is vital to user experience on all kinds of services that rely on the blooming of artificial intelligence. These workers are completely ignored by the majority of users, and their effort are credited to the algorithms and models. The result is, robots are overrated on their performance and capability.  As new software being put into use and the improvement of AI, ghost workers will be assigned to further tasks towards the realization of automation. This is the Paradox of automation\u2019s last mile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are they all mindless and unworthy of mention?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been thinking about the smartness of apps on my phone. Every time I talked about something that can be purchased, soon after that I receive notification of purchase promotion about that product from many apps from all my electronic devices. I know Google, Amazon and Apple probably already projected a prediction on my user activity and preference, however, I\u2019m surprised at their speed of self-confirmation. Is it just my history and the model that determine what to show me next, or there\u2019s something I couldn\u2019t see or imagine?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we make phone calls only by landline, operators\nare necessary workforce, and we know their importance. It\u2019s not the most decent\noccupation, but many people use this job to make ends meet. Today, most people\nare enjoying the all kinds of service brought to them by fast Internet and\ncomputing power, and they are unaware of the people that glue their interaction\nwith the machines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s unfair if we only give credit to the silent,\nformatted models and neglect the significant contribution of ghost workers\u2019\ncreativity and flexibility. Just as other collaborate work, effort is effort.\nHuman computation is already an indispensable part of the whole picture.\nWithout their effort, I guess all the expectation on AI will be disappointed in\nsome way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The jobs (or the combination of tasks) are described\nas mindless, which means no specific skill is needed to satisfy the goal. As I\ntried to register on a crowdsourcing website \u2013 Figure Eight, it\u2019s not hard to\nget started with all the helpful \u201cquiz\u201d and tips along your tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Question<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Even with this book and other research that expose Ghost work to public, will these \u201cirrelevant\u201d information draw their attention on this topic?<\/li>
  2. What else, similar to Ghost work, silently exist in the shadow of a great invention, research breakthrough, and technology?<\/li>
  3. Current law, social status, is it a good status quo? Is there something we can make progress on? Do they demand more \u201cemployee\u201d benefit? (Compared to traditional in-office full-time employees)<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    From class<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    They are hidden deliberately to hide some shortcoming\nof the platform. So it\u2019s difficult to decide whether we should expose them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Are we creating jobs to fire other people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    What is Ghost work? Under the shadow of emerging AI technology and its applications, millions of workers find tasks on online platforms and earn their paycheck by contributing in \u201chuman computation\u201d. These tasks connect end users and machine as an “API”. The work process is totally invisible to the users, yet their contribution is vital […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":296,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,19],"class_list":["post-68","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\/68","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\/296"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724s20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724s20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724s20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions\/74"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724s20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724s20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/cs6724s20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}