In a purported $15 billion deal, Meta plans to purchase a 49% interest in Scale AI, placing Scale CEO Alexandr Wang in charge of the internet giant’s new AI division tasked with achieving “superintelligence.”
A top data annotation company, Scale AI was established in 2016 and employs people all around the world to develop or label the data used to train AI systems.
Wang, who is already a billionaire, is projected to become even wealthier as a result of the deal, which will also give several of his colleagues ownership in Scale AI. For Meta, it would boost the company’s faltering attempts to take challenge OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic at the “frontier” of AI.
But sociologists who study the industry say the transaction is unlikely to help Scale’s contract workers, many of whom make only a few dollars a day through a subsidiary called RemoTasks. Data workers usually get compensated for the work they do rather than having a formal job. Labeling the contents of photos, responding to inquiries, or selecting which of two chatbots’ responses is superior are examples of activities that can be used to train AI systems to better suit human tastes.
He anticipates that very few, if any, Scale annotators will find any benefit at all, according to Callum Cant, a senior lecturer who specializes in gig work platforms at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom. That there would be any feed-through would be shocking. The majority of these individuals do not own any shares in the company.
Low pay and unfavorable working conditions are already problems for many of those employees. The Scale subsidiary RemoTasks did not meet fundamental requirements for fair labor representation, fair contracts, fair management, and fair compensation, according to a recent assessment by Oxford University’s Internet Institute.
According to Oxford scholar Jonas Valente, who contributed to the analysis, a significant portion of Scale’s value is derived from the data work services provided by hundreds of thousands of workers who are underpaid and have inadequate protection. Even with modest efforts to reform its processes, the corporation is still far from upholding fundamental criteria of fair work.
That’s not likely to alter with the Meta agreement. Valente states, “Unfortunately, the growing profits of many digital labor platforms and their primary companies, like the case of Scale, do not translate into better conditions for [workers].”
For this story, a Scale AI representative declined to comment. In May, the company told, “We’re proud of the flexible earning opportunities offered through our platforms.”
The question of whether Scale AI will continue to provide data to OpenAI and Google, two of its main clients, is also raised by Meta’s investment. According to analysts, Meta may perceive benefits from denying its competitors access to annotated data, which is a crucial tool for improving the intelligence of AI systems in the increasingly competitive AI market.
Cant states, Could competitors be prevented from using Scale AI’s platform and data annotation pathway if Meta purchases access to it?. It’s totally up to Meta’s plan. According to him, it could result in a reduction in the pay and tasks offered to employees, many of whom already find it difficult to make ends meet with data labor.
The Blockgeni Editorial Team tracks the latest developments across artificial intelligence, blockchain, machine learning and data engineering. Our editors monitor hundreds of sources daily to surface the most relevant news, research and tutorials for developers, investors and tech professionals. Blockgeni is part of the SKILL BLOCK Group of Companies.
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