Comment by CodesInChaos
2 months ago
> In a snake-eating-its-own-tail irony, a 2023 analysis found that between 33% and 46% of workers on the platform were using large language models to complete their tasks,
I assume AI use by workers has risen to the point where it renders Mechanical Turk pointless.
This likely means those consuming the outputs of Mechanical Turk don't have a good way to measure the value (aka quality) of the outputs.
If they did - then they shouldn't care whether it's a human or a LLM. And if it's a LLM - then the cost will roughly correlate to the MIN(cost of the LLM, cost of a human) to do the task.
I think the "state of the art" of measuring the quality of outputs was to send the same task to multiple "agents" and only accept answers if over a certain amount agree. With some human review and reputation scoring sprinkled on top. It was a while since I was in this field though
This approach does work when there's a clear answer but what about tasks where the correct answer is multi-modal? Incentivizing agreement works only for tasks where there's clear answers.
The problem is bigger. Outside of coding, there is no real way to reinforce a model with pass/fail cycles until it stops hallucinating. This is why customer service uses will always have a problem. This compounds as you chain agents together.
It's like the speed of light - to get to that point, you need exponentially more energy, and you will never ever get there.
> then they shouldn't care whether it's a human or a LLM.
I imagine that the whole point of posting a task to Mechanical Turk nowadays is that you want it to be completed by humans. Either because you are after the small discrepancy between AI and human performance, or because humans are the object of your investigation.
I guess that’s the dead internet theory. People are trying to train llms using mt, but just training on itself.
Yeah, I was doing this kind of Artificial Artificial Artificial Intelligence back in 2012 to make some extra $$$. Glad they finally "patched" that hole ^^.
You were using LLMs in 2012?
Fiverr-5.5 was the leading model back then.
They were faking artificial intelligence by using real individuals.
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Artificial AI = stuff like mechanical turk where they get humans to do stuff computers can't do and make it look like it's "AI"
Artificial Artificial Intelligence = using computers to do mechanical turk jobs
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Not LLMs. (Useful) LLMs came to the market around 2022.
Living, Low-income Minions?
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I don't see why I would care how they do the job. Just do the job, I have other things to do.
If you get someone to mow your lawn, do you not care if (a) they use an automated machine that you could rent by the hour for far less, and/or (b) at the end your lawn is actually in a good shape?
I have very low expectations for $2 per hour. If I would feel the need to use such service I would expect them to cut all corners. If you have a subscription for a decent LLM, know how to get my data into it and know how to write a prompt that does the job you might have 3 skills I don't or I might not have time to do it.
If the lawn looks great you get to do it again. I could ask the guy you send how much you are paying him and I could ask you how much the mower costs but it wouldn't necessarily be a good use of my time.
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If you want data to train a Llm, you might want human data for specific parts vs Llm.