Behind the Scenes: Many Hyped AI Services Rely on Large Teams of Humans
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Amazon's grocery store "Just Walk Out" technology actually relied on 1,000 workers in India to review purchases for over 70% of customers in 2022.
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Many companies like Presto Voice have claimed to use AI for drive-thru ordering, but filings revealed over 70% of orders still require human operators.
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Facebook's personal assistant "M" from 2015 was mostly just human operators performing tasks, not true AI.
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Expensify's receipt scanning feature in 2017 sometimes sent private expense details like credit card numbers to random Amazon Mechanical Turk workers.
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Scale AI, a $7 billion AI startup, has 10,000 workers in the Philippines labeling data and training its AI models behind the scenes.