Some quotes from the article:
There is something very strange about having this very intimate view into someone’s life. It feels odd to see someone’s daily drive, but it’s also an important part of correcting and refining the program.
We review about five and a half to six hours of footage per day. It can be very hard to focus. You can get in this kind of fog when you’re just watching clip after clip and it can be difficult to keep yourself sane.
Anytime you’re not clicking around in the software program, it tracks you as if you aren’t working and it basically sets off an alarm to your superiors.
These jobs sound very dystopian to me, and a bit psychopathic as well. All the movies I watched growing up about dystopian societies is reflected in what this guy says about his job.
It’s hilarious to me when people complain about jobs like this training AI, oh you watch videos and it’s hard to concentrate after a while? Welcome to actual driving jobs and factory work!
Before automation people stood at machines doing the same repetitive task for 8 hours a day or longer and if they lose concentration they could lose a limb.
Automation and computation has made what would have been absolute plum luxury jobs less than a hundred years ago seem burdensome and ‘dystopian’ to our modern sensibilities, I have no doubt that we will likewise see the mental and physical effort of driving as well as the danger of it become as unconscionable as threshing or machine operator work is to us now.
Watching videos is comparable to e.g. ATC work. I don’t see driving as comparable. In one you’re actively doing something. In the others you’re only checking for stuff that might go wrong but usually goes ok.
There’s a significant difference in ATC vs the training AI: in ATC work people are swapped out after a few hours and they have regular breaks. While here for that AI the company is pretending it can be done for an 8 hour shift.
Meh, that’s been said for ages. Currently the reliability of automated driving is often crazily overestimated. Human driving is pretty reliable, especially on highways.
Change for the better is good. But just because there’s a computer involved doesn’t mean it’s already better or that’ll be foolproof.