OpenAI, Oxfam, Delhaize and Baluwo
A Tuesday miscellany of food for thought
OpenAI offers few open answers to serious questions
I was fairly ambivalent about ChatGPT. But not any longer.
In an article in Time Magazine that looks into what appears to be vast underpayment of Kenyan nationals to “cleanse” toxic text from the program, a passage points to the difficulty in telling a machine to understand when rape can be talked about as a matter of social concern (and therefore deals with sex as nonconsensual) and when rape cannot be talked about, as a sexual humiliation that onlookers revel in (and is not therefore just nonconsensual but also forms a sexual fetish). In more blatant cases, a request to spout out the recipe for making crystal meth is refused point blank by ChatGPT. But a scenario in which two people pretend they’re making crystal meth could induce the bot to reveal the chemical’s secrets. Here’s the passage from Kenya (c/o Time magazine):
"In the day-to-day work of data labeling in Kenya, sometimes edge cases would pop up that showed the difficulty of teaching a machine to understand nuance. One day in early March last year, a Sama employee was at work reading an explicit story about Batman’s sidekick, Robin, being raped in a villain’s lair. (An online search for the text reveals that it originated from an online erotica site, where it is accompanied by explicit sexual imagery.) The beginning of the story makes clear that the sex is nonconsensual. But later—after a graphically detailed description of penetration—Robin begins to reciprocate. The Sama employee tasked with labeling the text appeared confused by Robin’s ambiguous consent, and asked OpenAI researchers for clarification about how to label the text, according to documents seen by TIME. Should the passage be labeled as sexual violence, she asked, or not? OpenAI’s reply, if it ever came, is not logged in the document; the company declined to comment. The Sama employee did not respond to a request for an interview."
The text in Time also tells us that Sama, the Nairobi-based firm engaged to vet these texts, was also asked in an add-on request to evaluate imagery, including acts of violence, rape and child abuse. After a short time — and having not received any guidance on why the imagery (all apparently sourced from deep web URLs) required to be evaluated — Sama terminated its cooperation with OpenAI eight months before the due date and glossed over its reasons for doing so when it informed staff of the resulting redundancies.
Besides the concerns raised at scraping the Internet for material that is rendered unauditable for questions of copyright, OpenAI seems to be indulging in fringe research that delves into the deep web and raises serious questions about just how it intends to cleanse its resource content to render it safe for universal use.
Oxfam battles with accusations of wokery
It hardly seems fair that an organisation that takes a balanced view of need, want and deservedness has to defend itself against lambasts because it appreciates need, succours to want, and judges no deservedness in helping the poor.
The middle ground, where reason, balance, rationality and objectivity reign supreme, is a place that once thrived and bustled with debate and has now become barren, windswept and cold. Its defence, an arduous task; but the territory, still valuable. Unlike the trenches either side of it, from which brickbats are launched as were they missiles bent on destruction, the middle ground is that which proffers itself optimally as the place where growth and wholesomeness free from exploitation and self-interest will one day again prosper. It is territory worthy of the fight, even if its susceptibility to onslaught makes it vulnerable to unwarranted attack — from all sides. We are entering the Age of Unwarranted Attacks — an observation that does nothing to render the attacks warranted.
The steadfastness of Oxfam’s — of anyone's — belief in the cause cannot but win the day — if steadfast it be; the remarks of those who conjure criticism for criticism’s sake will relent, defeated; the voice of reasoned belief is well able to withstand the barrage of unconsidered slur. We stand at the cusp of the demise of the Age of Reason. If we let it fall, then the voiceless proponents of no man’s land will fall with it, for then we will have ceded victory to partisans who vaunt with vainglorious pride “Those who are not with us are against us;” and, against that, there is no defence but to acquiesce in defeat, or to raise insurrection.
Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words, for some, are inadequate.
(Read the Guardian article: Oxfam’s job is to end poverty.)
When management refuses point blank to listen to workers’ concerns, where’s the “management”?
“Delhaize” is a name closely associated with the world of the supermarket in Belgium. In 1865, they invented the very notion of a supermarket, long before the US had tumbled to the idea. The name covers three chains, all stemming from the same family: Alain Delhaize, Louis Delhaize and the company now in controversy, Delhaize le Lion, which has just delivered “a slug in the jaw for the workers.”
Delhaize le Lion wants to sell off the remaining 128 shops it still fully owns, and says it has 200 candidates lining up to buy them. The workers think it’ll mean worse pay and employment conditions. I think they’re right.
Anyone in management who can’t make a supermarket pay in the current climate of consumer exploitation isn’t very good at their job. If management cannot make these shops pay their way other than by selling them, how, then, do they expect a new owner to make them pay their way, if it’s not to be by depressing the conditions under which employees work?
In the two sets of consultation with unions, the total talking time has amounted to less than one hour. Management is adamant and believes in the strengths of its arguments. They have nothing to say further on the matter and today they called the police to control the protesting crowd.
There was no protesting crowd, but a group of concerned workers. Calling the police is a vast overreaction to a problem that should be capable of reasoned resolution, but which someone is refusing to budge on. It beggars belief that we still call that “management.”
It is a battle stance, for which one party has called in reinforcements before a single hour of discussion has taken place. Aside from the non-discussions with unions, surely the candidate purchasers of the chain must be starting to ask themselves what flexibility they can expect when they in turn assemble around the boardroom table to discuss the terms of their take-over. Maybe there’ll be a cop standing behind each chair, with truncheon drawn and then quietly holstered — once the contracts are dutifully signed.
(VRT coverage of the dispute here (in Dutch).)
I’m no saint. Please don’t think me a saint or even entertain the idea that I think of myself as a saint. I smoke. There — isn't it obvious I’m no saint?
Saints are hard to come by and, sainthood being as it is, you’ll rarely meet one about whom it occurs to you that they might be a saint, so it’s pretty pointless trying to identify them.
But there’s something you can do that could help your fellow man, and could even be a step of your own towards potential sainthood. It’s something I knew nothing about until recently, when a fellow member of LinkedIn steered me towards a most satisfactory solution.
Some people are reluctant to help others whom they do not know in far-off places in the world. Their hearts are filled with generosity, and scammers know this and ply themselves on you and, as a result, it can be hard to tell the genuinely needy from the truly earnest cases. Well, on LinkedIn we’re supposed to be savvy individuals, able to exercise judgment and make wise decisions, so I reckon we know a scam from a genuine appeal. If we’re undecided, we can ask others for advice.
I paid 80 euros for what’s pictured below, and it will put me out of cigarettes for a few weeks. I paid the money to a firm in Spain called Baluwo, who will organise provision of groceries, or other benefits such as call credit or payment of a power bill and such like, on your behalf to a recipient in the third world of your acquaintance. It takes a couple of minutes.
You will get in return nothing. Not a single thing. You will receive thanks — I receive outpourings of thanks. But you’ll have nothing in your hand. No flag, no bunting, no sticker, no certificate, no songs of celebration. None of that. You’ll have a receipt, that’s all.
But you will know that you made a difference. If we all make a difference, we can move the world.
