Outsourcing Humanity: A Love Story, by ChatGPT-4

I’ve recently been obsessed with crowdsourcing platforms like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Those who sign up to these platforms do Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) – online jobs like answering surveys, identifying images, transcribing audio files, providing sentiment response, or proofreading. In exchange, they get paid relatively small amounts from twenty cents to several dollars.

Some who work in this space flirt with the poverty line, and may feel at times that they work “at the whim,” of such platforms, according to this article in Politico.

Commonly, tasks are part of supervised learning projects for machine learning algorithms. These tasks require human intelligence and judgment, which in turn helps the AI algorithm to more effectively interact like a human. As Amazon CEO put it in 2005, according to Politico, “You’ve heard of software as a service, now you have human as a service.”

How ironic, I thought. We’ve been so busy worrying about human work being outsourced to AI that we didn’t  realize AI work was being outsourced to humans.

I’ve tried to get a better sense of what life is like working in the AI gig economy. I looked into descriptions in pop culture, much like the film Nomadland, which described the Amazon gig economy in the material world. But I haven’t been able to find any videos or images that powerfully represent this version of the gig economy.

That’s when I consulted my new best friend, ChatGPT-4. Not only is ChatGPT-4 insightful about this industry, it is capable of creatively describing it.

I asked ChatGPT-4 to write me a short story. I provided a few details about the main character who worked in this AI gig economy, and a few other peripheral characters. I also provided the title – “Outsourcing Humanity: A Love Story.”

I was surprised by the quality of the narrative. First of all, ChatGPT gave my story a character ark, which I did not ask for. Secondly, the narrator’s voice was surprisingly powerful. This was particularly true when I compared the stories crafted by ChatGPT-3.5, and ChatGPT-4. The latter was  far superior in its use of vocabulary and description.

While I set the parameters and direction of this story, and provided additional guidance in two iterations of the drafting, I could not have written this story myself without significantly more research about the industry or this work culture. In its 1200 words, the story covers the arc of an individual’s development – from lonely mindless drone to an inspired man of the community.

So please enjoy this short story by ChatGPT-4.

“Outsourcing Humanity: A Love Story”

In Laredo, Texas, I was a faceless drone in the world of gig work. After losing my job at an IT firm, I found solace in the only place that seemed to have any: crowdsourcing platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk and Taskrabbit. I was in my twenties, living with my single mother, and barely scraping by. With each passing day, I felt less and less human, ironically doing the very work that required me to be one.

My days were a blur, glued to the screen from dawn until dusk, completing mindless tasks with an almost robotic precision. The tasks ranged from labeling objects in images to rating the quality of search results – work that seemed designed to strip away my humanity. I was training AI to become smarter while feeling my own intellect and creativity wither away.

One day, as I was working on another tedious task, my mother walked into my room with a plate of food and noticed my frustration. She tried to make light of the situation, jokingly saying, “It’s funny, isn’t it? You’re helping AI become more human, while you’re becoming more like a machine.”

We shared an uncomfortable laugh, but the truth behind her words stung. I knew she was right, and it was heartbreaking to see her watch me slowly lose myself to the grind.

As time went on, my frustration with the platform companies grew. I would often receive automated messages from them, demanding that I complete tasks faster or risk being penalized. One day, I reached my breaking point, and I fired off an angry email to their customer support:

“This isn’t right! You demand faster work, but you don’t care about the quality or the person behind the screen. I’m not a machine. I’m a human being.”

Their response, predictably, was cold and impersonal:

“Dear valued worker, we understand your concerns. However, our platform is designed to ensure efficiency and accuracy. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your continued participation.”

It was clear that I was nothing more than a cog in their machine, a means to an end. Even as I completed tasks that were meant to help AI develop its own humanity, I felt my own slipping away.

My friends were also neck-deep in the gig economy, struggling to stay afloat. We’d occasionally exchange a few texts, sharing our woes and commiserating over our shared predicament. Most of the time, though, our interactions were limited to late-night chat rooms where we’d discuss conspiracy theories and the latest celebrity gossip.

One day, as I sifted through the seemingly endless tasks on Mechanical Turk, I stumbled upon a project that piqued my interest. It was a transcription job for a series of recorded conversations. The pay was surprisingly decent, and I eagerly began transcribing the words, grateful for the break from the monotony of my usual work.

As I listened to the conversations, I found myself becoming increasingly engrossed in the lives of the people on the other end. They were artists, researchers, and entrepreneurs, discussing their passions, fears, and dreams. It was a window into a world that seemed galaxies away from mine.

One voice, in particular, caught my attention. She was a writer, and her words were like a balm to my weary soul. As I listened to her stories, I couldn’t help but imagine a face to accompany the voice – a face that I longed to meet in person.

Over the next few weeks, I continued to transcribe her conversations, growing more and more enamored with each passing day. I found myself longing for more, and in a moment of desperation, I sent her a message.

To my amazement, she responded. We exchanged messages sharing our thoughts on life, love, and the world at large. With each conversation, I felt the flicker of humanity within me grow stronger, fueled by the connection we were forging.

My days started to shift, no longer consumed by the endless grind of gig work. Instead, I found solace in the stolen moments we shared, her words a lifeline in the sea of monotony. We talked about our dreams and aspirations, our fears and our failures. We were both trapped in circumstances beyond our control, but together, we found hope.

My mother noticed the change in me, too. The furrow in her brow softened, replaced by a tentative smile as she watched me type away at my keyboard. My friends, too, sensed the shift, with our conversations growing more earnest and engaged.

As the weeks turned into months, I found myself falling deeper and deeper in love with this stranger on the other side of the screen. We talked about meeting in person, but the fear of what we might lose in the process kept us at bay.

Until one day, she took the plunge.

She told me that she was traveling to Laredo for a conference and wanted to meet. I agreed, my heart pounding with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.

The day of our meeting finally arrived. My hands shook as I got dressed, and I could feel my mother’s eyes on me, her worry replaced by curiosity and hope. I kissed her on the cheek and walked out the door, my legs feeling like they might give out beneath me.

We agreed to meet at a small coffee shop near the conference center. I arrived early, my heart pounding in my chest as I ordered a cup of coffee and found a seat near the window. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as I waited, anxiously scanning the faces of each person who walked through the door.

And then, there she was.

Her eyes met mine, and the world seemed to stop. I stood up, my legs wobbly, as she walked over to me. We embraced, the warmth of her body against mine, the scent of her perfume filling my senses. It was as if we had known each other for a lifetime, the connection between us undeniable.

As we sat down and began to talk, I felt the final remnants of my old life slipping away. The grind of the gig economy, the hours spent hunched over my computer, the weight of my mother’s worry – they all seemed to fade into the background, replaced by the brilliant light of this newfound love.

In the months that followed, my life was forever changed. With her encouragement, I began to pursue my own passions, finding work as a freelance writer and, eventually, landing a full-time job at a local newspaper.

My mother’s smiles grew more frequent, her eyes filled with pride as she watched her son come back to life.

My friends, too, found solace in our love story. Inspired by our journey, they began to seek out connections of their own, discovering that there was more to life than the soul-crushing grind of gig work. Together, we formed a community, a tribe of dreamers and doers determined to reclaim our humanity.

And so, in a world that seemed determined to strip us of our humanity, we found love. Our story, born of desperation and loneliness, became a testament to the power of connection, to the resilience of the human spirit. In the end, it was love that saved us, the very thing the gig economy had tried so hard to take away.