Some Startups Have Worked Out It's Cheaper and Easier To Get Humans To Behave Like Robots Than it is To Get Machines To Behave Like Humans (theguardian.com) 112
"Using a human to do the job lets you skip over a load of technical and business development challenges. It doesn't scale, obviously, but it allows you to build something and skip the hard part early on," said Gregory Koberger, CEO of ReadMe, who says he has come across a lot of "pseudo-AIs." It's essentially prototyping the AI with human beings, he said. From a report: This practice was brought to the fore this week in a Wall Street Journal article highlighting the hundreds of third-party app developers that Google allows to access people's inboxes. In the case of the San Jose-based company Edison Software, artificial intelligence engineers went through the personal email messages of hundreds of users -- with their identities redacted -- to improve a "smart replies" feature. The company did not mention that humans would view users' emails in its privacy policy. The third parties highlighted in the WSJ article are far from the first ones to do it. In 2008, Spinvox, a company that converted voicemails into text messages, was accused of using humans in overseas call centres rather than machines to do its work. In 2016, Bloomberg highlighted the plight of the humans spending 12 hours a day pretending to be chatbots for calendar scheduling services such as X.ai and Clara. The job was so mind-numbing that human employees said they were looking forward to being replaced by bots.
And it's easier and cheaper ... (Score:5, Funny)
... to manufacture humans.
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Perhaps...
https://www.nerdwallet.com/blo... [nerdwallet.com]
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I'm aware, and your point is taken.
However, it takes two to tango and a large crowd to build.
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The conception phase certainly is; manufacturing humans until fully functioning ... not so much.
Those costs are outsourced to parents for the most part.
It's cheaper for the company.. the only metric they really care about.
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I agree.
Robots require a shit load of humans to: (the short list):
- Extract raw material
- Refine that
- Ship to plants
- Fabricate intricate parts
- Come up with "how to"
- R&D
- Build fabrication facilities
- Market final products
- Install and maintain
- Apologize via Twitter for fuckups
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Xanax, when taken as directed, is a safe and effective palindrome.
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Great, so now you have compiled a list of reasons for robots to enslave humans. Some people believe this has already happened.
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Ah, grasshopper (I kid).
Robots are computers.
For every motherfucker out there with a computer, there's another motherfucker out there with a computer.
Every goddam thing that's ever been made has been hacked by clever humans.
Every.
Single.
One.
Computers have had poor security since the days of DOS, and that DNA has survived in every computer to this day.
You and I know that the huge list of Windows updates (for example) on any machine is 90% "Security Update."
It's a bitch being one or ten steps behind.
Robots ar
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Re:And it's easier and cheaper ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see here. Producing an entry-level human takes over 16 years of high-intensity work involving dozens of skilled workers. More if he needs a post-graduate degree. Doesn't sound that easy to me.
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And you're a DIY robot manufacturer?
Re: And it's easier and cheaper ... (Score:2)
But you externalizations the costs of the first 16 years.
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Let's see here. Producing an entry-level human takes over 16 years of high-intensity work involving dozens of skilled workers. More if he needs a post-graduate degree. Doesn't sound that easy to me.
You're not thinking like a manager...
You can outsource the work and the cost of producing an base model human to other people. Externalities do not come out of my bottom line (or my bonus).
All it costs us is 1 x Iphone per unit, unit obeys Iphone.
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Let's see here. Producing an entry-level human takes over 16 years of high-intensity work involving dozens of skilled workers. More if he needs a post-graduate degree. Doesn't sound that easy to me.
Most of the work is handled by other humans keeping costs low.
Re: And it's easier and cheaper ... (Score:5, Funny)
And we can reduce the basic manufacturing time to one month by using 9 women. Think of the savings!
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See?
Discount a lot of the expense as "entertainment."
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How much did it cost you out of pocket.
I'll take that number and compare and contrast.
Guess how that'll go.
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Sup EA, working on the next madden yet?
There's also this factor (Score:5, Interesting)
Folks that are smart enough to replace other humans with technology aren't really truly interested in doing it.
Usually, it's someone in the same room. It's hard to want to upend their current income, just for a boss that you don't trust to give them another replacement task that isn't worse.
Usually, what happens is that they instead make a set of tools that the other folks in the room to ALLOW them to automate their own tasks, hint them in to how they can get their work done in seconds, then never mention the implications of that to the boss. Sometimes the boss knows this and doesn't mind entirely in the scope of these hollow jobs.
If this society wasn't so focused on having jobs in order to eat and keep a house, I'm sure a lot more jobs would get completely automated.
That's a big part of why I'm in favor of a universal basic income, so life doesn't have to be about bullshit jobs for so much of so many lives.
Ryan Fenton
I've replace coworker's jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
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I automated a job away before, it was repetitious and boring much like the ones mentioned in the summary. The worker was rushing me along because they hated the task and wanted to use their time for other things. Soon after completed they had a dry spell and had to let the worker go, they also had to let me go since they were so lean. However a few years later they're running stronger again, perhaps the savings allowed them to stay in business. Nobody was upset or directly harmed by this one, it was sim
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I half-automated away my job by creating templates... except the company wound up hiring two people to replace me. They claimed they were eliminating my position but I was actually pointing out the frequent and business-affecting failures of the CFO-acting-as-CEO's son-in-law, and they got rid of me for that. Sadly, I was working at an Indian casino, and unless you're a tribal member they can do basically anything to you without repercussions, lawyers won't even bother to call you back about these things. N
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If this society wasn't so focused on having jobs in order to eat and keep a house, I'm sure a lot more jobs would get completely automated.
That's a big part of why I'm in favor of a universal basic income, so life doesn't have to be about bullshit jobs for so much of so many lives.
I agree with you, but what makes you assume any kind of Universal Basic Income will amount to anything more than Welfare 2.0 for the unemployable masses?
You severely underestimate the power of Greed, and forget who ultimately would fund UBI. Go interview someone on welfare. You may find yourself feeling totally different about adopting yet another model that barely sustains life. At least bullshit jobs offer some level of varying income and prosperity.
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I was wondering why they think this is new. This is something that Henry Ford was known for when he was running Ford Motors, it wasn't yet possible to replace people with robots, but it was possible to get people to behave like humans doing highly repetitive tasks the same way with minimal variation.
Why is it that everything is new with these millenials? It's like they've never actually been outside or ventured out of their safe space to a world where there's a ton of stuff that's already been done better.
All we need now! (Score:1)
Someone invent us a Turing test that provides a strong negative, i.e. catches out humans pretending to be robots.
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Man Bites Dirt (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of the most appropriate late-stage capitalism headlines I've ever seen:
There is a lot to unpack there. You could teach a course in post-capitalist economics based on that one headline alone.
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I assumed the A/C was referring to the schema of capitalism. You both should take a breath.
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"late stage" would indicate that this is a recent thing near the death throws of what is going on. It is not. It can only be what you are thinking if you IGNORE 150 years of the since the start of the industrial revolution.
I propose that you re-think how you talk and what words you use.
First, that's fucking rich from someone who doesn't know the difference between "throws" and "throes". Second, you are completely, utterly, and in all other ways wrong. Late-stage means it's coming to an end, it has nothing to do with what has come before but with what is coming soon.
If you want to see what an anti capitalistic society would comprise of I suggest this book.
That's what it could be comprised of. I propose that you re-think how you talk and what words you use.
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Only because we've got slave labor wages (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, Right up to the moment... (Score:1)
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Humans are the only AI systems that can be constructed with primitive materials using unskilled labor.
Ridiculous, what a bunch of (Score:1)
bleep blurp glips
In olden times (Score:5, Insightful)
There used to be a "thing" called efficiency experts.
The did something called, generically, time and motion studies.
They would watch people work with a stopwatch and a notepad... Sometimes with a camera to record the smallest nuance of the work process.
They would do this with lots and lots of workers and then compiles that information into detailed procedures telling the workers how to do what they did.
Is this not robotic?
I just love how every cohort thinks they've invented some new thing when all they've done is to re-implement an old practice that, because they never bother to look back at how things like this were done before, they didn't know about.
One day they may even re-invent sex and try to patent it.
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My father used to be one under the title "industrial engineer". He started with factories, but as they offshored, worked with hospitals. Some people resented being told how to do their job, so there were office politics fireworks at times.
He'd do it at home also, arguing that we wasted toilet paper; and we had strange arguments over the physics of wiping and average consistency of poop ("bar
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There is a hilarious and depressing Harvey Birdman episode about one. I have local copies but I think all the episodes are youtube. Completely worth watching all the way through.
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One day they may even re-invent sex and try to patent it.
Oh, that was done already, in the 60s.
(You may not realize that before the 60s nobody ever enjoyed sex. Or so the trendoids of the 60s seemed to believe.)
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Hmmm... How to say this.
I remember the 60's and I was there.
This isn't new (Score:4, Informative)
In 1770, there was chess-playing robot called "the Turk", or the "Mechanical Turk." (It was in Austro-Hungrian, but stylized like a Turk). It was excellent at playing, and defeated Ben Franklin and Napoleon.
Of course, secreted within the metal frame was an excellent human player. Now, Amazon has a service called Mechanical Turk where you can employ people to act as faux AI.
Amazon's Mechanical Turk (Score:4, Informative)
And how is this significantly different from Amazon's "Mechanical Turk"? Same basic concept; get people to do what AI cannot yet do.
Marspoet's Paradox (Score:2)
To wit:
Upon reaching equality with evolved intelligence, any created intelligence will be subject to all the same limitations, vulnerabilities, and flaws.
Not at all the same (Score:5, Funny)
Robots are incentivized by the promise of an electric charge. Humans are threatened by the same thing.
It's harder to get humans to behave like humans (Score:5, Interesting)
"Zero Tolerance", "More than my job's worth", " Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." etc. etc.
It's easier to turn off analytical thought and plug-n-chug through the day.
Make a decision is risky if it's wrong we'll catch hell; if we just follow procedure until five o'clock we get paid for another day.
Acting like a human is more rewarding. Acting like a machine is easier and safer.
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Acting like a human is more rewarding. Acting like a machine is easier and safer.
I do see your point, but it makes little sense from a business perspective. Humans are not something you can convert to a machine. Even acting like one doesn't eradicate all of the human requirements. You cannot control an illness that wreaks havoc on your body. You can't just simply turn into a machine and ignore the need for sleep, food, and a reasonable amount of physical labor constrained within a period of performance that ends when a human demands to rest after an 8 - 12 hour work day. And no mat
Obligatory short story link (Score:5, Insightful)
http://marshallbrain.com/manna... [marshallbrain.com]
Rob
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What's new: lack of human involvement (Score:5, Informative)
It gets worse than whats-in-inventory. There is a SPECIAL CASE of mechanized disorder regarding items not in inventory. I first experienced this with pharmacies when I had to fill a regular prescription.
I'd show up near the same day of the month like clockwork. Sometimes they'd be able to fill the prescription and sometimes they could not. When they could not I'd head to a competitor and pay a slightly higher price. But I'd always check them first. And sometimes the second store didn't have any either and I had to go to a third place. On the third successive month that I was informed they were out... I held back and watched the clerk who was the head pharmacist and I asked, "Did you write it down?" What do you mean, he said. "The fact that you had to turn away a customer, what the drug is and how many." Oh no, our computer system tells us when we're out and how much to order. "Why isn't it working then? This is the third time I've been turned down." He said, the computer varies the amount we order but it changes from month to month and we have surges of demand and then next month, very little, so we don't order any. "Isn't that strange for prescribed drugs? It means you have no customer loyalty because you turn them away and they stay away. And when someone is told you cannot fill the order, no one writes it down and adds it up. If your computer system doesn't have a way you can record the fact that you turned away a customer, then it is stupider than a human being. Your sales vary because people are being tossed back and forth between pharmacies ny necessity rather then preference. I'll bet your competitors have the same dumb system. If YOU start a log of what customers were turned away for and manually adjust your orders... I'll bet you'd improve your business." It was like a light went on in the attic. They were never short again.
Years later now, many people -- even store managers -- are past the robot stage. I'm one of the only customers that takes managers aside and describes chronic shortages. The answers vary but it's often a shrug of helplessness, especially with computer inventory control and stocking brands like soda and milk. . Chain stores have started to ask customers at checkout, "Did you find everything?" and sometimes they'll become confused if I ask for a slip of paper to write my own note to the manager. Otherwise it falls down the memory hole. I've told managers, "A store without chocolate milk will get walkouts. People will abandon their carts and leave." and the manager was not convinced. "People cannot get full size chocolate milk in convenience stores at a decent price. They have to go to another grocery store anyway, they don't want to wait in two lines, so they'll just leave. Asking at checkout if they found everything isn't enough. How many people leave empty handed?" Hmmm....
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FYI - I've never met anyone with such detailed opinions about the way pharmacies do business who wasn't also an opiate addict, and I work for a harm reduction clinic. You might want to be careful what you're "putting out there".
Haven't met many people, then? What an ugly comment. So insinuating things about other people is your idea of 'harm reduction'? What is your take on my remark about chocolate milk then? I've been a Systems Analyst and consultant by trade, You're an opiate troll.
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We also have strawberry milk too. And yes, it's disgusting. One of the big problems is that it's almost always made out of skim milk.
It doesn't seem to be a big seller where I'm at, but they must sell enough of it to keep stocking it.
Obligatory MANNA (Score:2)
Manna by Marshal Brain [marshallbrain.com]
Of all the dystopian fiction I have read, THIS story -- though there's no war or zombies in it -- is the most terrifying. Every other dark future has its struggles to survive and challenges to solve. But this story offers no hope at all. It leads past the movie Idiocracy, but not that one, an alternate Idiocracy future where energy drink Brawndo will forever water the crops.
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Uh... did you read the whole thing?
Uh... yes, right down past its Walden Two [wikipedia.org] collectivist ending. Manna is a pretty much a re-telling of Skinner's work, and you should seek out Walden Two and "Uh... read the whole thing." Both are typical of the way socialism is presented as a utopia in the making, in utter disregard to the intermediate steps that break down to chaos and toxic regimes in the real world Manna is a toxic regime imposed on most of the world's population (whose resources are no longer their own) to support a small utopian el
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Wow, for a moment I thought I was on the Internet Movie DataBase. Do you have an actual f opinion of it or is it just 'bad feels' all the way down?
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Sounds like 'Sandra' (Score:1)
Real mechanical Turks! (Score:2)
Ants? (Score:1)
I also prefer this approach when there are lots of people with lots of work. Each person does a little bit of the task...and before you know it...everything's done. This is usually for volunteer work, mind you.
(Not that I would approve of *exploiting* anyone...of course!)
They could have read a book ... (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure Henry Ford figured this out 100 years ago. And probably others ...
Can 10,000 hours of practice make you an expert? (Score:1)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)
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I'm just being nice.
No one posts on /. to be ignored. ~ CaptainDork
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Don't call me a cigarette.
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You did.