contract workers | ResearchBuzz: Firehose

September 21, 2023

Motherboard: Google Flat-Out Refuses to Bargain With Workers, Prompting YouTube Music Strike

Motherboard: Google Flat-Out Refuses to Bargain With Workers, Prompting YouTube Music Strike. “YouTube Music contract workers went on strike on Wednesday morning because of Google’s refusal to bargain with the union representing the workers. Google, YouTube’s parent company, claims that because the workers are employed through a third-party contractor it has no obligation to meet them at the table, according to an email from a law firm representing Google seen by Motherboard.”

September 13, 2023

Bloomberg: Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta Probed by Lawmakers on Use of AI ‘Ghost’ Staff

Bloomberg: Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta Probed by Lawmakers on Use of AI ‘Ghost’ Staff. “Democratic lawmakers are pressing the top tech firms to open up about the conditions of their ‘ghost work’ — unseen laborers like those labeling data and rating responses who have become pivotal to the artificial intelligence boom.”

Security & Legal Issues 0

August 28, 2023

Washington Post: Behind the AI boom, an army of overseas workers in ‘digital sweatshops’

Washington Post: Behind the AI boom, an army of overseas workers in ‘digital sweatshops’. “In the Philippines, one of the world’s biggest destinations for outsourced digital work, former employees say that at least 10,000 of these workers do this labor on a platform called Remotasks, which is owned by the $7 billion San Francisco start-up Scale AI. Scale AI has paid workers at extremely low rates, routinely delayed or withheld payments and provided few channels for workers to seek recourse, according to interviews with workers, internal company messages and payment records, and financial statements.” This is a gift article, so you should find no paywall.

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August 6, 2023

Bloomberg: Google Illegally Cut Contract Staffers Who Worked on AI, Union Alleges

Bloomberg: Google Illegally Cut Contract Staffers Who Worked on AI, Union Alleges. “The Alphabet Workers Union accused the internet giant of violating federal labor law, which prohibits retaliation against employees for organizing. More than 70% of the proposed bargaining unit — which includes 118 writers, graphic designers and launch coordinators who create internal and external Google content — were told in July that they will lose their jobs, according to a Thursday filing with the National Labor Relations Board.”

Security & Legal Issues 0

July 17, 2023

Bloomberg: Google’s AI Chatbot Is Trained by Humans Who Say They’re Overworked, Underpaid and Frustrated

Bloomberg: Google’s AI Chatbot Is Trained by Humans Who Say They’re Overworked, Underpaid and Frustrated. “Google’s Bard artificial intelligence chatbot will answer a question about how many pandas live in zoos quickly, and with a surfeit of confidence. Ensuring that the response is well-sourced and based on evidence, however, falls to thousands of outside contractors from companies including Appen Ltd. and Accenture Plc, who can make as little as $14 an hour and labor with minimal training under frenzied deadlines, according to several contractors, who declined to be named for fear of losing their jobs.”

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July 15, 2023

San Francisco Chronicle: These Google contractors unionized. Weeks later they were laid off

San Francisco Chronicle: These Google contractors unionized. Weeks later they were laid off. “Last Thursday, [Casey] Padron got an email summoning her and her coworkers to a mandatory meeting that day…But instead of being in a typical meeting with her coworkers, she found herself on a one-way Zoom call with Accenture managers and human resources personnel. Padron said employees were told they were being let go, ‘Because of changes in budget allocations.’”

Security & Legal Issues 0

June 9, 2023

Bloomberg: Google Contract Staff That Helped Train AI Seek To Unionize

Bloomberg: Google Contract Staff That Helped Train AI Seek To Unionize. “A group of Alphabet Inc. contract workers are launching a unionization campaign, saying they need a greater voice at the company that has tasked them with work on its most high-profile products, including training generative AI answers in Google’s search engine and chatbot.”

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May 8, 2023

NBC News: ChatGPT is powered by these contractors making $15 an hour

NBC News: ChatGPT is powered by these contractors making $15 an hour. “[Alexej] Savreux is part of a hidden army of contract workers who have been doing the behind-the-scenes labor of teaching AI systems how to analyze data so they can generate the kinds of text and images that have wowed the people using newly popular products like ChatGPT. To improve the accuracy of AI, he has labeled photos and made predictions about what text the apps should generate next. The pay: $15 an hour and up, with no benefits.”

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April 26, 2023

SFGATE: Google contractors vote to unionize in historic landslide election

SFGATE: Google contractors vote to unionize in historic landslide election. “A group of contracted YouTube workers based in Austin, Texas, voted to ratify a bargaining unit Wednesday afternoon, in an election historic for creating a union to bargain with a tech company and its contractor together as joint employers.”

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April 13, 2023

Motherboard: ‘Overemployed’ Hustlers Exploit ChatGPT To Take On Even More Full-Time Jobs

Motherboard: ‘Overemployed’ Hustlers Exploit ChatGPT To Take On Even More Full-Time Jobs. “Over the last few months, the exploding popularity of ChatGPT and similar products has led to growing concerns about AI’s potential effects on the international job market—specifically, the percentage of jobs that could be automated away, replaced by a well-oiled army of chatbots. But for a small cohort of fast-thinking and occasionally devious go-getters, AI technology has turned into an opportunity not to be feared but exploited, with their employers apparently none the wiser.”

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April 5, 2023

Gizmodo: More Ex-Tweeps Sue Twitter for Alleged Illegal Layoffs

Gizmodo: More Ex-Tweeps Sue Twitter for Alleged Illegal Layoffs. “Twitter owner Elon Musk is facing yet another lawsuit claiming he was too busy trying to fire half the company he didn’t give his former tweeps the legally required two months of notice. On Tuesday, ex-Twitter contract workers filed a proposed class action lawsuit against the blue bird app and their former employer TEKsystems Inc. The former contractors claim Twitter did not grant them the mandatory 60 days advance notice before laying them off.”

Security & Legal Issues 0

March 6, 2023

The Verge: Labor board decision could force Google to negotiate with YouTube contractors

The Verge: Labor board decision could force Google to negotiate with YouTube contractors. “The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that Alphabet, Google’s parent company, should be considered a joint employer for a group of YouTube Music contractors. The workers are currently attempting to organize with the Alphabet Worker’s Union, and the NLRB’s decision could mean that the tech giant has to negotiate with them if they vote to unionize in an upcoming election.”

Security & Legal Issues 0

February 28, 2023

Bloomberg: Google Contract Workers Win Raise Following Union Activism

Bloomberg: Google Contract Workers Win Raise Following Union Activism. “The Alphabet Workers Union said on Monday that thousands of contract employees assessing the quality of Alphabet Inc.’s Google search and advertising won a raise that brought workers’ wages up to $15 an hour, following a Bloomberg report documenting allegedly inadequate pay and benefits.”

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February 18, 2023

Column: Minimum wage ‘ghosts’ keep Google and Microsoft’s AI arms race from becoming a nightmare (Los Angeles Times)

Los Angeles Times: Column: Minimum wage ‘ghosts’ keep Google and Microsoft’s AI arms race from becoming a nightmare. “The raters join a wave of discontented contractors in speaking out: workers who ensure YouTube videos contain the correct metadata went on strike the same week, alleging unfair labor practices. That’s not even the bottom of the barrel. A Time magazine investigation revealed that contractors in Kenya were being paid less than $2 an hour to review content for ChatGPT — much of it so toxic that it left them traumatized.”

Research & Opinion 0

February 4, 2023

Engadget: YouTube Music workers strike at Google’s Austin offices

Engadget: YouTube Music workers strike at Google’s Austin offices. “YouTube Music workers in the Austin, TX area who voted to unionize are striking. The Alphabet Works Union-CWA (AWU-CWA), which represents the contractors, says this is the first time a group of Google-affiliated workers has gone on strike.”

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Bloomberg: Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta Probed by Lawmakers on Use of AI ‘Ghost’ Staff

Bloomberg: Google Illegally Cut Contract Staffers Who Worked on AI, Union Alleges

San Francisco Chronicle: These Google contractors unionized. Weeks later they were laid off

The Verge: Labor board decision could force Google to negotiate with YouTube contractors

Column: Minimum wage ‘ghosts’ keep Google and Microsoft’s AI arms race from becoming a nightmare (Los Angeles Times)

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