The hereafter of artificial intelligence and war go dizzyingly high - tech , but that ’s not always the case .
The truth , for at least one multimillion - one dollar bill San Francisco startup and its customers Google and the U.S. military , is that building clipping - boundary AI patently involves a chemical group of old - fashioned human beings grind through mountains of data , often with no idea what they ’re work on .
Google hired gig proletarian from a “ human - in - the - loop ” motorcar learning troupe calledFigure Eightin order to help develop the company ’s controversial Project Maven initiative , a project with the U.S. Defense Department to develop an artificial intelligence programme to analyze drone footage , according to a Mondayreportfrom the Intercept .
Those workers had no approximation they were working for either Google or the U.S. armed services , Figure Eight account executive Will Pleskow reportedly told the Intercept . Gig workers on this sort of crowdsourcing platform can earn as small as $ 1 per hour for “ micro - tasks ” as part of a simulation ring “ human - in - the - eyelet ” designed to have human race replete in on tasks where computer typically fail .
Project Maven first came to light last year when GizmodoreportedGoogle ’s partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense to build an AI programme to analyse drone footage . Google decided against renewing the contractafter public outcry and a firestorm among employees first learning of the project .
G of Google employee signed a petition demanding Google cancel the contract , and oodles of employee resigned from the firm .
Although Google officials defended the ship’s company ’s participation on Project Maven and qualify the work as pocket-size , email reviewed by Gizmodoshowed Google executives see a huge opportunity for growth in the hypothesis of remunerative business with the Pentagon and task that could ultimately lead to a cut - edge AI - power system capable of surveilling entire urban center .
The fact that Google get the rare stair of backing off Pentagon contracts worth , administrator hoped , potentially up to $ 250 million due in large part to employee revolt makes it even more striking that the company had an unspecified number of gig worker tasked with building the drone pipe AI program who did not and could not know what they were building . That secrecy is by invention .
The Google employees who agitate back against Project Maven are typically the traditional and relatively wealthy tech workers associate with Silicon Valley . It ’s the generally misfortunate and less - bear gig workers situated around the public — technical school workers in their own right — who have small resort to have it off or influence the Silicon Valley giant they indirectly work out for .
“ Contributors to the Figure Eight platform are not given who the data will profit , ” one former bunch doer say the Intercept . “ Usually , they are given a rationality for why they are doing a task , like , ‘ Draw box around a certain product to help machine recognise it , ’ but they are not given the company that receives the data point . ”
According to Figure Eight ’s Pleskow , the hoi polloi who do “ micro - job ” for the company seldom known what kind of program they are train .
“ homo - in - the - loop ( HITL ) is a ramification of hokey intelligence that leverages both human and automobile intelligence to create automobile learning model , ” Figure Eight ’s marketing textile explains . “ In a traditional human - in - the - iteration approaching , people are involved in a virtuous traffic circle where they train , tune , and try a particular algorithm . ”
Meredith Whittaker , a research worker at NYU ’s AI Now Institute , sound out the story illustrate “ nub issues ” about the future tense of AI .
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1092510180204560389
Google ’s Project Maven contract finish sometime in 2019 . The company did not respond to Gizmodo ’s request for comment or question about the contract ’s exact timeline . figure of speech Eight also did not reply to questions .
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