Capitalising on technology — data annotation career sets for single mothers

From astronomy to geography, artificial intelligence seems to have all the answers in the world. In fact, behind the machine are annotators who label and analyse all kinds of data, training the system repeatedly, so that it can recognise and understand the images, text and videos. The process is akin to parents teaching a toddler how to read, and this idea sparks “Label-Less”, a social innovation project that helps single mothers to be annotators.

Human annotators in demand 

There is more to the objective of Label-Less. Founder Anthony, who also runs a local tech start-up, has spent lots of manpower on data analysis. “A member asked us why not get others to do it, then we found out there are foreign companies that operate online platforms where people can undertake any kind of data labelling work, based on their language, ability and expertise.” However, where can we find people who are attentive, patient and flexible?

Carers having the edge on work 

The resemblance between annotators and mothers came to mind. “Many full-time mums think that they are no longer up-to-date in the society, but in fact, they have their own strengths; for example, they are more attentive than students, and accepting of flexible working hours, juggling between 2-3 hours work, childcare and housekeeping.” Thus, they launched the project Label-Less, to provide data labelling training to single mothers, so that they can take up higher-paying part-time jobs with new skills, alleviating their financial stress.

From having no experience to collaborating with NGOs

Even though the team had no experience in social innovation projects, they were able to realise their ideas through MakerBay Foundation’s Impact Innovation Lab as Incubatees. Not only did they receive The Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Fund, but also gained contacts to NGOs that assisted them in running the project. One of the keys is to build trust with the mothers. “We recruited about 30 mums for the training, and introduced ourselves, our aims and workflow to them, dispelling doubts that this may be a scam. We then let social workers do the screening to see whether they are suitable.” 

Training turns into parent-child activity

The partnering social welfare centre offers childcare services to help mums look after their children during the training period. However, Anthony joked that it eventually turned into a parent-child class. “Kids would come find their mums, so it ended up that they took the class together. Some kids would talk or fight for toys, and others would cry, it was interesting and memorable. This also reminds us how great mums are.” Surprisingly, the mums are more tech-savvy than expected, and they learnt quickly about adding data tags to images with software. “Some of them completed their tasks promptly, and took the initiative to share others’ workloads, even if they didn’t know each other.” 

Expanding the project to cover people with disabilities and ethnic minorities 

Anthony believes that they can be managers or tutors in the future with related training, paving a career path with possible promotion in a society that leans towards a tech-driven economy. “Data labelling used to be in-house, but it could be an industry on its own, to establish a more specialised workforce.” They are looking to expand the training programme to cover people with disabilities, so that they can work from home. Ethnic minorities are also on their radar. “They are a significant part of the Hong Kong community, and their languages, religions and cultures are knowledge that we need.”