Tara McMullin

On top of dealing with the actual content, moderators are probably using an interface that hasn’t been updated recently, because engineering resources go toward developing new products and functionality for customers. Improving the experience for content moderators is never at the top of a company’s to-do list. For example, an old interface might... See more

The fact that many American companies are paying paltry wages to workers while lavishing cash on top executives and investors is no happenstance. It's a policy choice. In the United States we have a tax and regulatory environment that rewards that behavior. We can decide to maintain the status quo or change it.

Over the course of the last century, the number of workers employed as domestic servants, in industry, and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically. At the same time, ‘professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers’ tripled, growing ‘from one-quarter to three-quarters of total employment.’ In other words, productive jobs have,... See more

While being underrepresented is a fixed state that requires coordinated action to remedy systemically, being underrecognized is an ongoing, active state that we can change from moment to moment. Intuitively, it has an agent. That’s what makes this word an actual call to action. It puts the onus on the folks with the power to act, and it makes the... See more

The programmer Simon Willison has described the training for large language models as “money laundering for copyrighted data,” which I find a useful way to think about the appeal of generative-A.I. programs: they let you engage in something like plagiarism, but there’s no guilt associated with it because it’s not clear even to you that you’re... See more

‘The internet is forever’ has long been the refrain of neurotics who wring their hands over privacy. But, back in the earliest days of online interaction, we couldn’t conceptualise what forever meant for digital experiences. They seemed ephemeral, intimate. We were blissfully unaware that our little exchanges might one day be part of ‘Big Data’ to... See more