So, a company sets up some service that they claim is automated and runs on 'AI.' Behind the scenes, they are running some imperfect and noisy data through an ML model; this ML model, being imperfectly reliable, is backed up by some large volume of invisible, precarious human labor.
At which point do we call this a mechanical turk? What's the hit rate the ML needs to achieve before we're no longer allowed to say said ML service is "just some guy?"
More importantly, why would we cede discursive power to these companies by going along with their assertion that their 'AI' is doing something? Why would we join them in asserting that the labor that backs up this service is in some sense being 'done by' an AI, rather than adopting the posture that humans are doing this labor in a way that is mediated through an ML system?
Of course, companies like Amazon do not divulge the success rate of their systems; they don't divulge how much human intervention is required. In the case of 'Just Walk Out', it sounds like rather a lot of human intervention was required.
But whether human review was being used in 90% of cases, 50% of cases, 10% of cases or 1% of cases: the reality is that it is absolutely fair and correct to say that this 'AI' was Just A Guy. Because ultimately this system would not have worked at all without the human labor; automation was not actually removing the need for human labor, it was just... automating the more obvious parts of the task.
I need people to stop being so reflexively afraid of being 'unfair' to fucking Amazon that they lose sight of the actual realities at play here. Fundamentally, an ML system was being used to render human labor obscure and invisible, in the interest of disinforming everyone involved so that this labor could be rendered precarious and disposable. Fundamentally, claims of automation were being exaggerated by a corporation with an interest in building this type of potemkin technology.
It is also important not to get dazzled by technical bullshit. "Ah, but those workers were merely 'training' the system." That is Amazon's claim. There are two problems with the way people are taking this claim at face value.
First, it is an unsupported technical claim that this 'training' would ever lead to a system that would function without human intervention. Are we meant to simply take Amazon's word for it on this?
Given that Amazon themselves seem to be abandoning this model, perhaps we shouldn't take their claims about its future capabilities (not even current capabilities! future!) at face value.
Furthermore, very clearly the human labor was required for the system to function satisfactorily at all in its present state. We don't have to countenance bullshit claims about future capabilities.
One way or another, to 'train' an ML model is still meaningfully to do the labor required to make that model function. Once again, Amazon's framing of the circumstances here is meant to make those workers disposable; they are an on-ramp to full AI management of the system. When we accept Amazon's framing and decide that we need to be 'fair' to them in this way, we aid them in their intent to use up these workers and then discard them.
Fundamentally, when an Amazon spokesperson says something, you don't have to immediately assume that they are lying but you do have to recognize that they do intend to mislead you. They are trying to enforce an epistemology of the world that is favorable to them and disfavorable to humanity. Please remember who you are hearing from and remember that they are not a good-faith participant in discourse.
Amazon's intent was absolutely to get people to think (investors, consumers, regulators, etc) that this was a closed loop with no human intervention, that they had automated away the need for grocery checkout workers. And that is simply not true, and it is right and fair to point out that it is not true. You are not 'correcting misinformation' by pointing out that the ML system obviated the need for direct human intervention in some number of cases, you are missing the point entirely.
So yes, Just Walk Out was literally Just A Guy; to shriek at people that they Don't Understand the Technology for saying so just makes you a sophist doing Jeff Bezo's work for him.
tl;dr I need people to stop thinking of 'AI' as a 'technology' and start thinking of it as what it is: a rhetorical strategy used to change how we perceive and talk about a related group of technologies.
I see two main types of AI grifting going on right now:
- Literally Some Guy
- The Wise and Unknowable Oracle
When you see headlines about "AI", you can usually substitute one or the other:
- Amazon uses Literally Some Guy to figure out what you're buying as you walk out of their stores
- Lockheed-Martin deploys The Wise and Unknowable Oracle to find high-value targets on the modern battlefield
