Artificial intelligence: What is it like to work at Remotasks – 07/12/2023 – Tech

“Get paid weekly via PayPal based on the quality and number of completed tasks” is the promise of Remotasks, a site that offers data annotation jobs to train artificial intelligence. The platform brings together 240,000 professionals from over 90 countries.

Users have to go through training to receive the first tasks, which the report took just over an hour to complete. Knowing English is essential to undergo Remotasks training, although the company does not notify you during the registration process.

The first task given to the reporter was to describe, via text, in English, commands for a robotic arm that moved objects in a house. Each instruction must contain up to 20 characters.

To complete the task, it was necessary to accumulate 3,500 experience points, just like in a video game. Each written order gave a certain amount of experience ranging from zero to 25—there were no returns on performance other than the score.

If the user’s deliveries fall short of what was expected by the project, Remotasks removes the person from the task without prior notice. The work done so far is unpaid.

“All of this, from training, is unpaid work, which should be prohibited under any circumstances”, says researcher Callum Cant, from the Oxford Internet Institute.

wanted by SheetRemotasks did not comment until the publication of this report.

A Remotasks employee, who asked to have her identity preserved, said she was disappointed with the platform. She says she has taken several courses but has not been given assignments to complete.

Users of the freelance site must accept a non-disclosure agreement to receive assignments. It is forbidden to divulge which projects you participate in, what work is performed and who pays for the task.

This user posted on Twitter that it is possible to increase income by asking children to perform simpler tasks on the platform. Remotasks, like other similar platforms, does not ask users to send documents to prove their age, even though their terms of use restrict access to minors under 18 years old.

A study led by Professor Matheus Viana Braz, from UEMG (State University of Minas Gerais), released in June, indicated that Brazilians earn an average of US$ 1.80 per hour of work (R$ 9.36, since in At the time of the study, the dollar was quoted at R$5.20). 477 workers from the Clickworker platform, the most successful competitor of Remotasks in the country, responded to the survey.

This value would be equivalent to R$ 1,866 for a full working day, or 1.41 minimum wage, without considering the charges that the company has to pay. Payments tend to vary from country to country, and average $4.43 per hour in developing countries. Kenyans were paid between $1.32 and $2 to annotate explicit images used in ChatGPT training.

Remotasks, despite paying more than the average of competitors in the country, is outside the ten most popular sites, as users report difficulties in receiving payments via the foreign payment company PayPal.

This payment platform is one of the main customers of Scale, the arm of Remotasks that sells annotated data to artificial intelligence developers. The holding company that controls the two AI startups was valued at US$ 7.4 billion (R$ 35.5 billion), after the 2021 investment round.

Part of the people who earn income from repetitive tasks on the internet prefer to keep silent about the work to avoid increasing competition, according to Braz. During the last few years, his team had to approach more than 800 people to hear 34.

The platforms, generally based in the global north, tend to replace tasks at times that are incompatible with the Brazilian routine. “One of the alternatives to get around this disadvantage is to start working in the early hours. This probably explains why 27.9% of the sample works on the platforms between 10 pm and 1 am and 9.4% works between 1 am and 5 am “, says the report.

Brazilian microworkers work an average of 15 hours and 30 minutes a week, which earns around BRL 583 per month. The sites that offer these odd jobs advertise themselves as forms of extra income, but 33.5% of respondents say they have no other source of funds.

Respondents to the questionnaire also have a level of education above the average of the Brazilian population, with 43% of them having completed high school and 39% having completed higher education. The frequency of masters and doctors among workers on these platforms is also higher than the rest of the country.

Press officer Isabella Velleda portrays the profile of most data annotators in the country: young people, women, from large urban centers who hope to earn extra income.

Velleda worked at Appen between January 2019 and June 2021, while studying journalism at USP. “It served to supplement the income I received from my internship.”

During this period, she did translation, transcription, photo and video collection, image annotation/labeling, etc. The most common task was to evaluate the quality of Google ads, according to user data and geolocation.

“The tasks always had very specific instructions, and if you didn’t follow them, you ran the risk of being removed from the project”, recalls the current advisor.

“At the height of my work, I worked about 60 hours a month, about 2 hours a day, which earned me about R$1,500, depending on the dollar exchange rate. This amount could drop in the months when I was busier and I couldn’t dedicate myself so much to tasks or when there was a shortage of work within the platform”, adds Velleda.

Another major Appen client is Meta, which owns Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook.

Matheus Viana Braz’s research, in addition to the questionnaire, conducted in-depth interviews with 15 workers. Within the group, each person worked on at least one and even four platforms at the same time.

Respondents say the worst tasks have to do with moderating content on social media, according to the report.

“I was working on a Facebook project, I had to check the ad, to assess whether it had blood, violence, abuse, whether it contained a weapon. Many times, I caught a heavy ad”, said Pedro, 23, to the researchers. If the person didn’t have the stomach to complete the task, they received nothing.

Helena, 54, told researchers she had worked on a project to train robot vacuum cleaners. The goal was to prevent the machines from choking on pet feces.

So she spent two days moving her dog poop around her house to take more than 250 photos. “At some point, the animal’s feces started to crumble, and Helena says she had to explain the situation to her neighbor to get another dog poo to complete the task”, says Braz.