Today's podcast points out yesterday's daily double in the Senate, with John Fetterman delivering a garbled round of questioning for bankers hastily and foolishly cleaned up by a Washington Post reporter and Dianne Feinstein claiming to have been voting in the Senate during months when she was in California supposedly recovering from "shingles." What effect will this have on voter views of Joe Biden, himself the object of questioning about his compos mentis? Give a listen.
Will, Hesse and Dan Boeckner review 1956’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
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One of the biggest misconceptions that drives mischief in the economy is the widespread belief that entrepreneurship is easy, and if it's not easy, it's at least formulaic. Deirdre McCloskey explains why that attitude can be so destructive.
North Carolina lawmakers override the governor's veto of a bill banning abortion at 12 weeks. Progress reported -- as the president and Congressional leaders discuss the debt ceiling stalemate. Growing outrage in San Francisco, over the shooting death of a man who was allegedly shoplifting. Correspondent Deborah Rodriguez has the CBS World News Roundup for Wednesday, May 17, 2023:
Richard Mathenge was part of a team of contractors in Nairobi, Kenya who trained OpenAI's GPT models. He did so as a team lead at Sama, an AI training company that partnered on the project. In this episode of Big Technology Podcast, Mathenge tells the story of his experience. During the training, he was routinely subjected to sexually explicit material, offered insufficient counseling, and his team members were paid, in some cases, just $1 per hour. Listen for an in-depth look at how these models are trained, and for a look at the human side of Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback.
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OpenAI's response:
We engaged Sama as part of our ongoing work to create safer AI systems and prevent harmful outputs. We take the mental health of our employees and our contractors very seriously. One of the reasons we first engaged Sama was because of their commitment to good practices. Our previous understanding was that wellness programs and 1:1 counseling were offered, workers could opt out of any work without penalization, exposure to explicit content would have a limit, and sensitive information would be handled by workers who were specifically trained to do so. Upon learning of Sama worker conditions in February of 2021 we immediately sought to find out more information from Sama. Sama simultaneously informed us that they were exiting the content moderation space all together.
OpenAI paid Sama $12.50 / hour. We tried to obtain more information about worker compensation from Sama but they never provided us with hard numbers. Sama did provide us with a study they conducted across other companies that do content moderation in that region and shared Sama’s wages were 2-3x the competition.
A new WBEZ project called First 12 Weeks chronicles the journeys of three new mothers. Today, we hear the story of Kristal from West Englewood. Reset talks with reporter Elly Fishman and Kristal’s caregiver Karie Stewart, a certified nurse-midwife in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at UI Health.
It’s just Jay and Tammy this week. (3:25) First, we chat about a mini-generation of Asian women named after Connie Chung and the news anchor’s professional legacy. (22:18) Then, we discuss the public killings of Banko Brown in SF and Jordan Neely in NYC—and the disturbing turn against poor (particularly Black) people in our cities.
We ask:
Has America so devalued the lives of homeless people that any offense now seems to warrant vigilante murder?
How do these conversations play out on the West versus the East Coast?
Some TTSG housekeeping: First, we’re having a subscriber picnic on June 10th in NYC! Subscribe on Patreon or Substack for more details.
Second, get a TTSG tote for yourself and all your pals! You can either get it shipped to you directly or select "Ship to TTSG" and pick it up at the June 10th picnic. If you’re shipping internationally, use this link instead. Order by this Friday and rep the pod wherever you go!
Andrew Louder grew up west of Houston, TX, in a town called Katy. He got into tech during his web mastery class in High School. He's a business graduate from Texas A&M University, and he got a taste of what life would be like as an entrepreneur when he founded a social group of Latin American students. Outside of tech, he lives in Dallas, married with 3 kids, and is enjoying all that life has to offer in that space.
About 6 years ago, Andrew decided to jump out and be on his own, with the hope of making a bigger impact than what he was experiencing. He went the solo consultant right for a while, bringing big firm experience to the table and trying things out. Fast forward to now, he and his team are at the forefront of utilizing AI to help you grow your business.
Rob is back and ready to share his inner-most thoughts on Batman movies, hearing Nirvana for the first time, and more as he looks back at quite possibly the most inescapable song of the '90s, “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” (4:00) Later he is joined by rockstar, lead singer of Hole, and wife of Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love to discuss her relationship with Kurt, Kurt’s beef with Pearl Jam, the original lyrics of “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and much more (1:12:00).
Preorder Rob’s new book, ‘Songs That Explain the ‘90s' here.
In a conversation that lasted eight hours over two days, the statesman discussed paths to peace in Ukraine, his evolving view on their NATO membership, and where China comes into play. Our crony-capitalism index is back, and the chart-topping culprits haven’t changed so much. And, the toymaker, Lego, is facing roadblocks in China.
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