

Can Crowdsourcing Make a Dent in Unemployment? Ask MobileWorks. - anandkulkarni
http://www.xconomy.com/national/2011/09/30/can-crowdsourcing-make-a-dent-in-unemployment-ask-mobileworks/

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notahacker
The question the article should be asking is whether there actually are any
tasks for which anonymous, unqualified, remote labourers based in the US have
>15x the market value of anonymous, unqualified remote workers based overseas?
[It would be interesting to hear any ideas MobileWorks have if they're willing
to share them at this stage]

The article also skirted the issue of whether the increasing ease of
outsourcing work for $5 per man day might actually be a major _cause_ of
structural unemployment in the US, even if you take the view that the _net_
benefit outweighs those job losses (I do). Sure, in the longer run companies
that have effectively substituted for US-based workers _may_ ultimately
reinvest their increased profits into something that creates demand for US
labour, and many of the jobs performed by crowdsourcers were never viable
full-time employment opportunities in the first place. But if crowdsourcing is
to make a dent in unemployment it'll have to start by making up for the jobs
it's creatively destroyed...

~~~
anandkulkarni
Sure, I'd be happy to share our perspective.

There are several unskilled tasks where US workers are required and where pay
be sizably higher – for example, work dealing with sensitive customer data or
security-sensitive content is often restricted to US nationals to comply with
privacy and chain-of-custody requirements. Companies know that they're getting
additional value from US workers and are willing to pay a higher price.

But for the record, our workers are neither anonymous nor unqualified, which
is a central advantage we have over other companies in the crowd space. This
means that where we're looking, we're not talking just about unskilled labor –
we're talking about all kinds of work.

I wish it were as easy as you suggest to outsource work online for $5 a man-
day! The rise of traditional outsourcing has certainly contributed to a loss
of employment in the US over the last twenty years, but it's still incredibly
difficult to outsource work online (part of the raison d'etre for
MobileWorks!) You'd be hard-pressed to find too many instances of jobs that
have disappeared due to online crowdsourcing in the last five years compared
to the traditional outsourcing economy. Given the scope of outsourcing's
effects, crowdsourcing is likely to be one of the few ways we can draw work
back into the US.

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viandante
Let's just remember that all the money saved non rehiring people is not lost,
it is probably going to increase investments/savings.

And with that, the reality of unemployed people is a bit different. The point,
in fact, is finding out why those more savings are not creating new jobs
throughout investments.

The way I see it, we are in a period where demand is really difficult to
predict and understand. Which brings to more bad investments than usual, which
then brings less jobs...

It is a really complex problem, it can't be solved by a web app. Especially it
can't be solved with low paid jobs.

~~~
jellicle
It's not a complex problem. Investment follows demand. If 500 people are
clamoring for a new daycare in a certain area, someone will invest and create
one. If there's no demand for a new daycare, it doesn't matter whether money
is available; no new daycare will be created (and if one is created, it will
fail).

The solutions to creating new jobs do NOT revolve around creating more
investment money. There is a TREMENDOUS excess of investment money available
in the world today. The solutions all revolve around creating more demand for
the things that investment money can buy, which typically involve getting more
money into the hands of poor people.

~~~
viandante
== which typically involve getting more money into the hands of poor people ==

An there we go. I absolutely agree if we discuss about helping the poor and
having a good public welfare. But there is no connection that I know between
giving money to the poor and economic growth.

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SomeCallMeTim
The xconomy.com web site is completely broken if you have NoScript enabled;
after about 2 seconds it forwards to the FRONT PAGE of the mobile site.

Sigh. Luckily you can hit ESC to stop it from forwarding you, but then if you
want to read the second page, be quick on the draw with ESC again or it will
send you back to the mobile site again.

Incompetent developers.

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prayag
Co-founder here. MobileWorks is a YCS11 company. I can check in from time-to-
time to answer any questions HN'ers might have.

~~~
russjhammond
From your experience are there any new types of tasks you see on the horizon
other than just the standard photo tagging, text recognition, etc?

~~~
anandkulkarni
Absolutely! The future potential of crowds lies in real-time applications, and
we're seeing these emerge with increasing frequency.

Embedding intelligence in software applications is a powerful concept. We can
build applications that understand our intentions in natural language, that
talk to us, and that amplify our ability to do work in new and powerful ways.

Putting cheap human intelligence into software lets us realize the vision laid
out for AI systems fifty years ago.

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jellicle
Well, yes, crowdsourcing can make a dent in unemployment, but the dent is in
the wrong direction: crowdsourcing clearly increases unemployment.

