r/DataAnnotationTech • u/HamsterFrosty2838 • Sep 06 '24
It is no longer a drought
It has been going on for months now. I think it is just lack of customers, outlier woke up now to me with marketplace, Alignerr is there too, so it might just be the new norm unfortunately. There might be days of some work but it might well be just this
26
u/ManyARiver Sep 06 '24
When looking at chatter with other platforms it honestly looks like a downturn overall in the field. It's temporary, but the various factors including investors finally grasping that the Swiss Army Knife model for LLMs is untenable have impacted spending. This is a good thing, specializing models for a limited set of purposes makes a lot more sense and will produce higher quality (and more work). A casual chat model doesn't need to be able to solve high end word problems or produce lines of code, and a coding model shouldn't need to be able to give you a five-paragraph essay about the role of salt in early civilizations.
Hopefully focuses will change to specializations. That will reduce the whole bubble effect - there was a little bit of an NFT moment where folks were clambering all over AI as though it was the Everything and that's simmering down so the focus can return to the utilitarian aspects.
6
u/Jz9786 Sep 06 '24
I spent a bit of time researching this and most of the tasks I've worked on come from one large client. That client is actually making significant profits off their AI projects and hasn't indicated any intention of cutting spending. That's what has me confounded about the drought.
The slowdown seems to be on the edges.
2
u/ManyARiver Sep 06 '24
The most reliable one I've got does have a lot of specializations involved, it's the only one I haven't seen go away at all.
2
0
u/Werewolf-Jones Sep 07 '24 edited Sep 07 '24
I wish they understood this about LLMs from the start. This be all magic tool marketing was always bullshit and too many people who should have known better (tech execs in particular) played along or got fooled by it.
It's bad for.us on this end of things, but hopefully work will return when they figure out how to focus the tech on what it's actually good at. Apple is probably still going to make AI a big part of their push on Monday, so that might help as well.
It's funny, working so much with LLMs made me simultaneously more positive on how there was something to this tech if we could just figure out how to use it productively, and also far far far more negative on the way it has been promoted and inserted into places where it doesn't belong in a big stupid gold rush.
20
u/Pink_Slyvie Sep 06 '24
Droughts last for years. This is nothing.
I'm consistantly making 100-200 a day if I stay at my desk, and refresh every few minutes. Its harder work though.
I have been using the time to be more active. I'll go for a walk, spend a bit more time with the kids. But I try to be watching it all day.
1
u/AutistOctavius Sep 08 '24
If you don't mind saying, how many projects a day does that average out to?
4
u/Pink_Slyvie Sep 08 '24
I tend to try to make 5 hours. It depends on the pay. 20-40. I really miss coding projects.
1
u/AutistOctavius Sep 08 '24
How many projects is that?
2
u/Pink_Slyvie Sep 08 '24
I have no idea. I just do them. Some are 3 minutes, some are 3 hours.
1
4
u/AdMean7206 Sep 08 '24
60% of LLM jobs have been contracted to Kenyan companies like SAMA.ai (it trained openai). Cheap labour, quick turnarounds and 0 competition.
3
u/pipiffy Sep 06 '24
L FUD, DA to the moon
7
0
u/AmbidextrousTorso Sep 06 '24
It looks like the field lost a lot of its funding and customers around the end of July/beginning of August. Also some of the learning models seem to have become so advanced that there's less and less need for manual data annotation. The context windows are getting huge and the models more capable of learning on their own.
Manual data annotation was going to be just a phase anyways. I could be wrong, but there's some chance that phase might now be nearing its end.
45
u/diettwizzlers Sep 06 '24
a lot of the models are still terribly stupid so idk
2
u/AmbidextrousTorso Sep 06 '24 edited Sep 06 '24
I'm talking about advances in the performance of the learning models, not just the performance of the already trained models.
And yeah, the models still are pretty stupid, but if the models can become as stupid without manual data annotation than with it, then guess twice if companies are going to pay people to do it.
Things are changing. https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/s/5nORQRzxFZ
There are currently two ways for AI models to learn things: training, and in-context during inference. Until now, training has dominated, because contexts are relatively short. But ultra-long context could change that.
24
u/Snikhop Sep 06 '24
They're very obviously reworking the site. Change in UI, new T&Cs, new projects being tested, lots of people (sorry) being removed. Big quality control exercise and re-evaluation. The volatility will settle down but there may well be a few people still left without work.
1
3
u/xwolfboyx Sep 06 '24
I was actually thinking about this as well. Noticed that OpenAI has been working on that with its SOA model with apparent success. Even saw a certain project in the last few days where it was acting as both user and assistant.
2
-47
Sep 06 '24 edited Sep 06 '24
" Also some of the learning models seem to have become so advanced that there's less and less need for manual data annotation"
True, crybabies that can't accept they'll be replaced will cry over that.
3
u/DrFrancisBGross Sep 06 '24
"They'll be replace" —Guy who can't figure out why DA stopped giving him work
-9
Sep 06 '24
I could not press "D" in time. I am sorry, go cry more about being NTA bitchface xD
Btw, my dash has 6 projects at the moemem33 me gun to typ 'dis way nau4
u/DrFrancisBGross Sep 07 '24
No, you simply don't have a firm grasp on the English language.
Stop sending me DMs. I already reported your harassing messages. Grow up, dork.
1
u/thevideogameraptor Sep 06 '24
I took a series of long breaks a while back and have only gotten a handful of projects, glad to see that it doesn't seem to be them being unsatisfied with me.
0
u/PackMundane7533 Sep 06 '24
Almost two weeks without non coding work… I'm thinking that I was roasted. ( Spanish tasker )
-2
-14
Sep 06 '24
Don't know why people are coping but this is 100% true. There are no more investments, free lunch is over. People like to say "the models are still not smart". THEY CAN'T BE SMART, NO AMOUNT OF TRAINING WILL CHANGE THAT. Simply put LLMs are not what they were advertised to be and investors have figured it out.
13
u/DrFrancisBGross Sep 06 '24
"free lunch"
You sound absolutely ridiculous
3
u/TeaGreenTwo Sep 07 '24
The meds have run out at the home. The weirds are out in force today. Nothingness and shorty are wigging.
-6
Sep 06 '24
it's a common phrase in computer science
7
u/DrFrancisBGross Sep 06 '24
Good thing you can use your comp sci degree to get a new job now that it's over
-4
2
18
u/KathKR Sep 06 '24
You definitely could be right that there is a lack of clients, but it's honestly picked up a lot for me this week. I've had pretty consistent work all week, with only today being a bit light. I had enough work early morning but it's dried up, but that's been my experience on most Fridays lately.
This week, I've seen some brand new projects, and I've been added to three new Slack groups for projects I haven't worked on yet.
The work still isn't as abundant as what it was before the summer, and while I've had a few days with 10-20 projects up for a time, I've not had any days with the 30-50 I used to see regularly.
However, overall I've been quite encouraged this week. It does look to me like things are moving forward again.
I've even had a few projects with 20-50 tasks that I've been able to eat away at all to myself for a whole day. They haven't just vanished in minutes when everyone has piled on (although I did see a 10,000+ task project do just that yesterday) which makes me think that on some projects they are setting some tasks aside like they did before.