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Tell HN: Y Combinator backing AI company to abuse factory workers

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Re: Tell HN: Y Combinator backing AI company to abuse factory workers

#91

Post by philipjoubert »

Kye wrote: post #82
philipjoubert wrote: post #35

As someone who grew up in a 3rd world country and whose mother owned a clothing factory, this product seems...fine? The response is an indication of how little people know about how their t-shirts and shoes are made.

No, we know, and we're not okay with it either. I understand it's often an improvement over other options for employment. That makes it understandable and even supportable to some extent, not okay . Here in the US, we spent centuries fighting and dying for better options. Tools like this are used to launder the dismantling of the results of all that work through a fantasy of objective metrics.

I watched my mother spend 30 years building her company...it's hard enough to build a manufacturing company in 3rd world country. Applying Western labour standards would make it impossible.

The way out of poverty is to through. You need to create enough value to be able to afford the airconed offices where everyone sits on an Aeron with a macbook pro.

Re: Tell HN: Y Combinator backing AI company to abuse factory workers

#92

Post by rimbo789 »

infecto wrote: post #59
trunch wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this will definitely be used only to innocently tell off people doing 1/10 the work of everyone else, and not micromanage and hound people to increasingly unrealistic standards in already desperate conditions. Safe to say you aren't in any position where every move you make will be watched by AI and analysed for faults so that your boss can scream at you more efficiently whenever you don't meet standards for…

Do you really think this tool is making folks micromanage and abuse employees or perhaps they already would be doing that and this tool helps it? There can be real value in these types of tools, its ultimately up to the implementation and I don't believe this tool will somehow make a happy work environment into an abusive one, the abuse will have most likely already existed.

Absolutely I expect it to be used to micromanage and abuse. Yes those behaviours already exist that’s why I know a tool that enables them will amphifly them

Re: Tell HN: Y Combinator backing AI company to abuse factory workers

#93

Post by jagger27 »

seper8 wrote: post #46
danpalmer wrote: post #26

This sort of performance management is unfortunately necessary. The problem is that we need tools for it to be built by people who can empathise with those subjected to them, and who want to do the right thing, and not these sorts of folks who are too immature and inexperienced to get it right. My previous company ran a warehouse and there was a clear bell curve of productivity. Most people were fine, some were excel…

Necessary according to who?

Investors.

Re: Tell HN: Y Combinator backing AI company to abuse factory workers

#94

Post by latexr »

infecto wrote: post #56

The only thing truly embarrassing is that nobody at YC advised them that this ad is 1) terribly amateur and 2) has the chance to look extremely bad. Did not advise and in fact published to their feed. Weird optics, I am not familiar with what I presume to be Indian factories, other than the wild lack of safety (thanks youtube) but I cannot see how this video does anything positive. As for the product itself I don't t…

> like all things, it boils down to the owner/managers of said factory not the tool.

Tools are created and optimised for a purpose. If you gouge someone’s eye out with chopsticks or a spoon, their inventors are hardly at fault. If you kill a bunch of people with an AK-47, its inventor doesn’t get a free pass.¹

These guys clearly built this tool to crack down on factory workers. They aren’t excused when managers use their tool for the thing it was made for.

¹ https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/01/13/262096410...

Re: Tell HN: Y Combinator backing AI company to abuse factory workers

#95

Post by snapcaster »

2099miles wrote: post #7
oulipo wrote: post #3

This kind of product is really shameful, and peak capitalism... looking at people as mere robots to serve your, disgusting

Peak capitalism would have the employees holding their own value and not being crushed in trash power dynamics to allow this kind of stuff. Capitalism is about nonviolent voluntary exchanges between two parties, when one party has a power dynamic skewed in such a way they can use tools like this that employees hate, then that’s not capitalism anymore.

yes yes true capitalism has never been tried. You realize you're doing the same thing hardline communists do right?

Re: Tell HN: Y Combinator backing AI company to abuse factory workers

#97

Post by latexr »

infecto wrote: post #59
trunch wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this will definitely be used only to innocently tell off people doing 1/10 the work of everyone else, and not micromanage and hound people to increasingly unrealistic standards in already desperate conditions. Safe to say you aren't in any position where every move you make will be watched by AI and analysed for faults so that your boss can scream at you more efficiently whenever you don't meet standards for…

Do you really think this tool is making folks micromanage and abuse employees or perhaps they already would be doing that and this tool helps it? There can be real value in these types of tools, its ultimately up to the implementation and I don't believe this tool will somehow make a happy work environment into an abusive one, the abuse will have most likely already existed.

> and this tool helps it

And that is bad.

> the abuse will have most likely already existed.

The abuse will get worse. The correct ethical answer to “the conditions are bad” is “improve the conditions” not “make them worse”.

Re: Tell HN: Y Combinator backing AI company to abuse factory workers

#98

Post by lm28469 »

philipjoubert wrote: post #91
Kye wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we know, and we're not okay with it either. I understand it's often an improvement over other options for employment. That makes it understandable and even supportable to some extent, not okay . Here in the US, we spent centuries fighting and dying for better options. Tools like this are used to launder the dismantling of the results of all that work through a fantasy of objective metrics.

I watched my mother spend 30 years building her company...it's hard enough to build a manufacturing company in 3rd world country. Applying Western labour standards would make it impossible. The way out of poverty is to through. You need to create enough value to be able to afford the airconed offices where everyone sits on an Aeron with a macbook pro.

I'm sitting on a $70 ikea chair, in a flat reconverted to an office, right under the roof, with no AC and I have 1st gen base model m1

FAANG is an exception, even in the west

Re: Tell HN: Y Combinator backing AI company to abuse factory workers

#100

Post by exsomet »

It seems like there’s been a rash of these instances lately where someone does something, says something, or builds something like this that’s not just offensive but unconscionable. And there’s always the predictable outcry and then usually that’s the end of it.

It’s given me pause to think about why that pattern has been established and I think the simple answer is that there are no consequences. The people we see in the news doing horrific things for attention are doing it because there is no mechanism to hold them accountable. Product launches like this - where it’s explicit purpose is to degrade and exploit humans - happen, meme video and all, because these people will not face any consequences for it (and the potential benefit is massive to them if it takes off).

Yelling and screaming about how horrible it is doesn’t really do anything and it’s not an effective use of time or energy. I wonder what society could do - not conceptually, but practically - to establish consequences for someone who launches a product like this.

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