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Comment by cabyn | Hacker News Reader

Sad to see the viewpoints of so many people framing this as "helping Kenya" or "They took the job, so it's worth it to them". I can assure you OpenAI did not have a charity meeting and say, "what poor, impoverished country can we lift up today?" It was "What country has limited labor laws, no unions, no red tape, and the cheapest labor we can find?" 99.99% of corporations put profit above people. That's why we still "benefit" from child labor and sweatshops, because we prefer cheap crap and money over the betterment of humanity. The same arguments given here were also given by coal miners in 1840's Europe[1],[2] when employing women and children, along the lines of "oh the children love it, they even get to see horses!" (and indeed, the children did show up to work every day, so why make a fuss?)

[1]https://www.calderdale.gov.uk/wtw/search/controlservlet?Page...

[2]https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1842/jun/...

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Re: child labor.

It's awful but who sends these kids to work? What will a mother of 3 children do if she can't feed herself?

It's a terrible cycle but it takes ages to fix. No foreign company is benefitting from Bangladeshi kids making low-quality bricks for their village. What is the solution today? If you tell them they can't work, who will feed them today?

Are you personally going to donate your money to not only feed all these people, build schools and infrastructure, but also $20/hour to everyone involved in the process?

Cool points for child labor yo. So because people are in terrible situations, I should actively seek that out to exploit it? Man, these kids have no other choice, better get my cheap labor while I can! Why not even free labor if possible?[1]

Same arguments were used for slave labor. How are they going to take care of themselves? Might as well just keep them as slaves. What are we going to do, pay them?

Child labor has been used by just about every major fashion brand in the world, not just to "make bricks for their village"... If that's the extent of what you think child labor is, might want to check out some books or do some googling. Here's just one to get you started: [2].

[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/andersonantunes/2011/08/17/zara... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nike_sweatshops

On what time frame? The west did a colonialism, creating these conditions for the purpose of making these places and people profitable for the west

Africa would be much more profitable for America if they developed like Japan and China have. Before colonialism they were a prehistoric continent in many places. It was in many cases evil. But I’d didn’t make them poor or backward

At the margin employing these people is net positive.

You see poor people and are so disgusted by them and their poverty, you blame the people who do pay them rather than those who don't. How many people could employ a Kenyan today, but don't?

How backwards is this thinking?

Imagine if every American company outsourced 5% of its back office work to Kenya for $2. That would be an enormous benefit, think of the millions of lives improved. Every extra foreign dollar paid to Africans working remote service jobs has 100x the impact of paying it to an American.

Do you really think it's more moral to increase the pay of American office workers from $22 to $24, rather than adding another Kenyan for $2?

You would pay the Americans because they have unions? labor laws? red tape? WHO GIVES A SHIT. "Sorry Kenyans, come back when you pass a minimum wage of $15 USD, then we'll employ you. Oh you can't meet a $15/hr productivity? Stay poor then".

Both these things can be true at the same time

OpenAI hired Kenyans because of limited labour law, no unions, no red tape, and the cheapest they can find.

Getting these jobs is good for Kenya

I would suspect that's only approximately true. OpenAI hired them because Kenya has hundreds of thousands of people who are fluent in English, but without the level of basic education or employability needed to earn more than $2/day.

For simple outsourcing tasks like this one, outsourcing to Kenya is a win-win. You can drastically reduce costs, while significantly improving people's lives.

That'd be true regardless of labor laws, unions, or otherwise. The legal system in Kenya isn't quiet as wonderful for business as you describe; it inherits British colonial bureaucracy, has some corruption, isn't all that laissez-faire, and can be a minor pain in the butt. Unions, likewise, would increase income, but not by enough to make this a bad deal.

Kenya is competing with India and the Philippians here, not with low-cost US labor.

My whole point is that it's really hard to ever classify exploitation as "good". I guess you can spin taking advantage of those in worse situations as good, but profiting (handsomely) off of people with good options doesn't seem morally great. Certainly good for business. But good for humans? This also isn't lifting Kenya out of poverty, this was a short term contract for a few dozen workers. If this signals to other businesses that Kenya is a great place for cheap labor and little regulation, it could very easily be turn bad for many Kenyans.

Are all the sweatshop and slave labor[1] jobs created by Zara good for those children and slaves? You get cheap clothes out of it after all. But is it really helping anyone other than Zara, and their CEO who is worth ..checks notes... 50+ billion dollars?

Companies could help a lot more by increasing labor standards, helping those in need, paying above a living day to day wage, etc. The would still have a few billion left in the bank I believe...

[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/andersonantunes/2011/08/17/zara...

> My whole point is that it's really hard to ever classify exploitation as "good".

Well, you could ask people from Kenya what they think about this stuff, instead of speaking on their behalf.

I believe someone from there even commented on this, in the thread.

Yeah, like if you removed chatgpt from the equation what would change? A couple hundred-thousand moderators would not have an above-average hourly wage and would instead need to find another international company or a domestic company to hire them who are all abusing the lack of unions and low wages.

What is your definition of exploitation?

>Agents, the most junior data labelers who made up the majority of the three teams, were paid a basic salary of 21,000 Kenyan shillings ($170) per month

Based on my quick and dirty googling, it looks like this is an above average salary for Nairobi.

>Are all the sweatshop and slave labor[1] jobs created by Zara good for those children and slaves? You get cheap clothes out of it after all. But is it really helping anyone other than Zara, and their CEO who is worth ..checks notes... 50+ billion dollars?

You haven't established a connection between OpenAI and slave labour. So this is irrelevant and detracts from your point by costing you credibility.

> If this signals to other businesses that Kenya is a great place for cheap labor and little regulation, it could very easily be turn bad for many Kenyans.

That's for Kenyans to decide.

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