#ghost workers

[illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo]

"There was so much she might not hear, being located so far from her body, relying on cheap headphones. It had never mattered before."

I have a new story out in Slate Future Tense!

The Skeleton Crew

I wanted to write a story about today's AI, but I also wanted it to be a fun adventure story inspired by Murderbot and Gideon the Ninth. Hence: The Skeleton Crew, where the scary skeleton robots are made of foam and plastic and piloted by remote workers.

Also check out the response essay by Melissa Valentine, "The Ghost Work Behind Artificial Intelligence".

I love this point the essay makes:

“The Skeleton Crew” offers an interesting twist because the A.I. indeed has feelings just like us, because it is, in fact, us: The A.I. is a group of remote workers faking the operations of a haunted house to make it seem automated and intelligent.

Some fun facts about the story:

The original spark for The Skeleton Crew was this illustration by SamsonLeisureCenter of "Tiny Cod Flames Rise", a neural net generated drawing prompt.

I thought it looked like haunted house robots whose day had been seriously messed up.

Other AI Weirdness easter eggs in the story:

Ancient Metal rocker Dragonsulla is from a neural net I used to generate metal band names.  Technically the name was "Dragonsulla and Steelgosh", so maybe she'll meet Steelgosh at some point.

The screennames in The Skeleton Crew are all from neural net generated roller derby names.

Cheesella DarthSugar Princess Morgue Mayhem Chicken Bud Crack

It was very tough to choose.

A recent audit in Osun State has uncovered over 500 ghost workers on the government payroll, highlighting significant issues in public sector accountability and financial management.

🔗 Full report:

Bauchi Govt. to prosecute 1,115 uncovered ghost workers

The Bauchi State Government, says it will prosecute the 1,115 ghost workers uncovered in the verification exercise of workers in the state and local government service. Gov. Bala Mohammed, stated this when he received the report of the 25-member Workers’ Verification Committee, on Thursday in Bauchi. The committee saddled with the responsibility of sanitising both the nominal and payroll of the…

25,000 ghost workers discovered in Borno State

The government of northeastern Nigeria’s Borno State says 25,056 ghost workers have been identified in the state as teachers and local government employees. In a statement to the media, the government said the discovery was made following a directive by Governor Babagana Umar Zulum to conduct two audits. The two commissions of assessment of local government employees and school teachers…