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...
>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.
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.
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.
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...