Training artificial intelligence is not necessarily a matter of automated algorithms. Human beings can also participate, and in this country, we don’t choose just any human beings.
You’re starting to get used to it if you regularly read Tech news: artificial intelligence is developing at great speed in almost all areas. To give their voices back to two women rendered mute by illness, or to write for you in any application, including (unfortunately) replacing journalists… There is plenty of choice, and an immutable common point. All these AI had to be trained via one of these solutions: automatically, by making them browse the web for example, or through human interactions.
To do this, you have to hire people and pay them. It’s a job after all. OpenAI for example, the company behind ChatGPT entrusts this to a firm that hires “clickworkers” mainly in Kenya, Uganda or India. This works in particular because the AI “speaks” English, a very widespread language in the world. But what about when you’re training a, say, Finnish system? It is better to search directly in the country, except that these are poorly paid jobs. One startup has found a solution, however.
This country is developing artificial intelligence by appealing to an astonishing category of population
Metroc, a Finnish company, trains your AI using prisoners. Thus, during 3-hour sessions, the inmate nicknamed Marmalade answers the questions that scroll on the computer in front of her. It’s about real estate. “It’s a bit boring,” she confides, but less tiring than the other activities offered in the prison. No objective to achieve in this job paid €1.54 per hour, the aim of which is also to diversify prison work.
For Jussi Virnala, founder and CEO of Metroc, this is a godsend. The Finnish unemployment benefit system is generous, which does not at all encourage people to take a job of this type. The question still arises of the usefulness of such work once released. In Finland, the emphasis is on reintegration of prisoners into societyand AI course are even offered in certain prisons, but this does not convince everyone. For its part, Metroc is already thinking about exporting the idea to prisons in other countries.
Source: Wired