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▲ nekusar 5 hours ago

Everybody who works for money is exploited. Not if theyre exploited, but how much.

And yeah, humans are being bought per hour to do AI training. Ok. Are they at least paid decently? Of course not! The surplus (work's worth - wages) is always captured by the Capitalist class.

Do they have to look at horrible content? Yeah. Part of the job and the danger when dealing with use-uploaded content. Is the problem just the horrible content, or is it about pay?

Also, this is regarding US AI companies according to the map. How are the Chinese doing their LLM training? Internally? Global South as well? Wherever they're doing it, is their pay better? Cause this map doesnt have anything regarding China... Or the EU either.

▲neuroticnews25 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm not being exploited any more than I'm exploiting my employer, that's a toxic way to look at voluntary interactions of people doing their best to escape suffering and death.

▲pona-a 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's in the interest of your employer to get the greatest amount of value for the smallest wage. That's not a moral statement about your particular employer, that's just a rational actor model of economics. In turn it's in your interest to expand least labor for the greatest pay. The asymmetry is your employer is an institution that can put incalculable resources into imposing its utility on you, from union busting and productivity spyware to lobbying national policy and conspiring to tilt the labor market... An employer can go months without significant fractions of employees, they can hire an entire hidden backup department in case of a strike, but you'll probably quickly starve without ongoing employment.

▲astrange 40 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> It's in the interest of your employer to get the greatest amount of value for the smallest wage.

No it's not necessarily, because employment is a repeated game with public information.

(Other people can see how much you're paying people by checking levels.fyi/blind/etc.)

There's better ways to motivate people anyway - thus tech companies pay with stock grants and performance bonuses.

▲thewillowcat 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And it is in my interest to charge my employer as much as they will pay for my work, regardless of whether or not I would have done it for less. In many cases, I would have, but I still negotiated for more.

There are many problems with modern capitalism and the political economy of the world. If you have ideas about how we can build a better system, I genuinely wish you luck.

▲lilbigdoot 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

One side is trying to escape suffering and death, the other is trying to create profit from their work.

"Voluntary" is not a word I would use to describe any agreement where one side is choosing between the deal and physical danger or potential death.

▲dogleash 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think the fact we take the temperature of the market and label it as a "strong" or "weak labor force" is a counterfactual to the idea there's equivalent exploitation.

It's mutually beneficial (otherwise one party or the other would terminate the contract), but that a wide window for the balance of benefits to shift.

▲briandw 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Have you ever looked at the living standards in communist countries? Do you really expect that communism will improve anything for anyone other than the party bosses?

▲breezybottom 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There are post Soviet countries that still haven't returned to their 1991 GDP.

▲briandw 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Do you trust the Soviets GDP numbers? Even if you do, the Soviets were spending upwards of 40% of their GDP on the military, not exactly a quality of life enhancement. Even discounting that, the only states that I could find that might qualify are Moldova (about the same level) and Ukraine about 72%). Ukraine is pretty clearly the Russians are to blame there. Other post Soviet countries, like Turkmenistan are > 580% bigger real GDP. Uzbekistan, Armenia and Kazakhstan are around 3x bigger GDP. Belarus, Tajikistan and Azerbaijan are around 2x bigger GDP. Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Georgia are about 1.3x bigger GDP.

▲breezybottom 2 hours ago | parent [-]

It doesn't really matter if I do, it matters if the economists who study it do. It's not controversial to say that "shock therapy" was a disaster, and that living standards have plummeted since the collapse of communism in many countries.

▲briandw 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You said "living standards have plummeted since the collapse of communism in many countries" objectively not true. After communism collapsed (collapsing because it failed as an economic model) life in those countries was pretty bad. Living in the ruins of a failed system is going to be a bad time. Even so, of the 12 Soviet states, 10 are much better off. Turkmenistan is 582% bigger GDP. Moldova is about the same Ukraine is worse off, but being invaded by Russia will do that. Other states like Poland at 3.5x the GDP and Estonia are at 8x the GDP.

▲vardalab 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Dude, it worked for a billion people in China, lol.

I grew up under communism. I don't like or don't care for communism, but I can't dispute that China lifted a huge number of people out of a warlord torn mess and misery. To some extent, Soviets did the same to Russian peasants, but of course, it got perverted along the way. But all things considered, I would take communism under soviets to being a serf under the Tsar.

▲TFNA 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Serfdom in Russia was abolished half a century before the Soviets. Moreover, the tsar himself was gone by the time the Soviets came along. Their October Revolution overthrew the tsarless regime that had been instituted in the preceding February Revolution.

▲briandw 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

China isn't communist. It stopped being communist under Deng Xiaoping. The market reforms are what lifted people out of poverty.

▲logicchains 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>Dude, it worked for a billion people in China, lol.

China starved tens of millions of people for two decades, it was only after they started opening up the economy in the 70s and allowed people to own farms/shops that living standards started increasing.

▲maxglute 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Chinese peasants been starving for 1000s of years, it took Chinese communist speedrunning development at the expense of human lives a few decades to end that cycle. Same with Russian serfs. There's a reason PRC lifespan and industrialization was significantly higher than developing peers by the 70s, well before market reforms, fail fast, break eggs make omelette etc etc.

▲nekusar 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And just how many deaths do capitalists and capitalist policies inflict? We never see *those* numbers.

This is just one instance: a hepatitis drug named Solvaldi. Costs $1000 a pill, need 84 pills for full course. How much does the drug actually cost? $300 and you can make it with the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective's chemistry reactor.

But why is this capitalist deaths? Cause 5 million people per year die from Hepatitis. And this drug is a *cure*. But insurance wont pay the $84000 needed for the cure. So they get maintenance drugs that dont cure, and those people die from it needlessly.

And the numbers are going up to 6 million a year of needless capitalist deaths, from a single drug.

We can easily look at corporate death panels, err, I mean medical insurance. Its insurance fraud if we lie, but to them, they can just deny treatment and wait out the death clock.

Capitalism is even more extractive and devastating on the populace. And instead of "capitalism causes X million deaths a year", nope, its a individual's fault. Its always the individuals fault, no matter how systemic the problem is.

▲phainopepla2 2 hours ago | parent [-]

In order to really do the math here, you'd have to determine whether such drugs are as likely to be created under non-capitalist regimes. In other words, even if capitalism has less-than-ideal mechanisms for distributing lifesaving drugs widely (during their patent period at least), maybe it is better at creating lifesaving drugs in the first place. It's possible that the net result of the capitalist pharmaceutical industry is millions of lives saved. Without taking that account, you can't do a real cost-benefit analysis.

Of course, it's probably not really possible to do such a comparison, because there are so many other factors, and state intervention is everywhere even in capitalist countries, via publicly funded research.

I think the only really fair way to compare which system causes more deaths than the other is to look at overall health outcomes and lifespans.

▲nekusar 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

One can agree to the findings in Das Kapital, and also not agree to the claims of the Communist Manifesto.

And to be fair, quite a few of the findings are basically restatements from Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Then again, most 'economists' rarely ever get past page 30 of that treatise, like all the "unseen hands that realllly have to prevent monopolies etc etc etc"