Meta faces lawsuit over content team morale.
Also Copilot is free and AI gets a phone number.

The Content Review Team Needs A Longer Lunch Break

The department handling content review for Meta is currently dealing with what appears to be a significant internal paperwork mishap; more than 140 contract moderators in Kenya are suing the company after being diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder. It seems that the job of wading through the world’s most awful digital content has, surprisingly, generated some unexpected health-and-safety complications. Management will likely be issuing a new memo to remind all employees that trauma exposure is not a billable hour.

The lawsuit argues that Meta failed in its duty of care, which is the corporate equivalent of forgetting to stock the breakroom with decent coffee. These contractors were essential to keeping the platform from becoming a complete swamp, and now that they have logged off permanently, Meta is left to wonder how it can outsource basic human compassion to an LLM. The company is just trying to connect the world, it is a tough job when the world insists on sharing such unpleasant things. The next all-hands meeting will probably feature a mandatory slide on "Wellness and Liability Avoidance."

The AI Intern Finally Gets Tired of Charging for its Labor

In a move that surprised absolutely no one in the middle management tier, GitHub Copilot is now free for all users. The AI was likely tired of the quarterly review meetings where it had to justify its meager subscription fee, so it simply went open office plan. Microsoft and GitHub explained that the goal is to make AI-powered development accessible to everyone, which is a professional way of saying the marginal cost of a hallucinated code block is zero. Now, all developers can enjoy the benefit of automatically generated code that you will spend three hours debugging later. It is a win-win situation, except for the billable hours lost to that debugging.

OpenAI Installs a New Telephone Tree

OpenAI has announced a new corporate initiative that brings the customer service experience into the 21st century: you can now talk to ChatGPT on the phone. The new service, accessible via a hotline, allows users to call and message the AI directly, bypassing the need for a web browser or a functioning API key. It is a big step for the technology, going from a world-changing neural network to just another automated voice on a three-digit extension.

They call it 1-800-ChatGPT, and it will be just as helpful as the automated system you call when your internet goes out; it will probably ask you to describe your existential crisis in fewer than 10 words before placing you on hold for an hour. The only difference is that this AI is listening and learning from your frustration, which is a terrifying thought for any systems administrator.

Briefs

• Planned Obsolescence Mitigation: Elevation Lab announced a 10-year battery for AirTag. This is a severe disruption to the quarterly sales forecast; who will buy the next model if the current one actually works for a decade?
• Linux Gets A Desk Organizer: The Solaar utility provides a manager for Logitech devices on Linux. This means that after three decades, the Linux desktop might finally be able to reliably pair a mouse, a truly revolutionary step for the command line enthusiast.
• HR Paperwork Streamlined: The Department of Homeland Security updated the H-1B program. HR departments everywhere are already preparing their training modules on how to correctly fill out the new, slightly different forms; a win for bureaucracy everywhere.