Apple
Uses tagged image data to let you search all over your computer for specific things in your images
Where
Cupertino
California,
USA
Appen
Developed the data sets that companies like Apple use for identifying parts of images
US Headquarters
Kirkland,
Washington
Military
Appen has had contracts with the US military worth $17m at points between 2005 and 2020, for different language projects.
Sidenote
Apple's Siri originally came out of military research like these projects too.
Questions
Appen has definitely been part of Apple's use of data annotation, though not very clear how.
Crowdgen
Appen subsidiary used for actually hiring people to do data annotation work
Where
Work opportunities can often depend on where you live and what languages you know
Who
People doing data annotation work as contractors
Military
People hired by Appen/Crowdgen to do data annotation work often aren’t told much about the work they’re doing or who it’s for.
Military
Many workers secretly end up working on projects ultimately for the US military, even those that live in places that have been attacked by the US.
Questions
Are there places you can’t work from at all, like most other data annotation companies?
Kind of Work
Image tagging
Given an image, draw boxes around objects and write what they are to train computers to do the same