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

news.ycombinator.com

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

#111

Post by oefrha »

dang wrote: post #108
oefrha wrote: post #19

Brought to you by the VC famous for InstallMonetizer? Make no mistake, it’ll basically back anything that makes money, there’s no moral high ground. And like it or not, this kind of AI (or should I say A-eye) is here to stay.

That's deeply untrue and unfair, and the fact that you've reached back 12 years to find an example, when YC has funded thousands of startups since then, is evidence against what you're saying. YC has turned down many startups because they didn't think what the product was doing was right, and it has defunded and banned startups for ethical reasons over the years. It's not your fault that you didn't know this, since n…

I deeply respect your work here on HN (and I semi-frequently email you so you know I do), but I disagree here. I don’t have to go back 12 years, I think YC funded its fair share of crypto scams like other VCs (of course what’s considered a crypto scam is different for everyone so no point in arguing), but I picked a very well known example that most old users probably know. I should probably mention I commented on a Launch HN thread this month that’s clearly illegal by design: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42886294.

I don’t have much against VCs investing in whatever makes money, to be honest, given how immoral the top dogs of this industry are to begin with, and I can’t claim I haven’t worked in an at least somewhat immoral company.

Edit: I only saw the second paragraph after a refresh. Sure, what I wrote about “back anything that makes money” was inaccurate so I should retract that, but I stand by the “no moral high ground” point.

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

#115

Post by dttze »

dang wrote: post #108
oefrha wrote: post #19

Brought to you by the VC famous for InstallMonetizer? Make no mistake, it’ll basically back anything that makes money, there’s no moral high ground. And like it or not, this kind of AI (or should I say A-eye) is here to stay.

That's deeply untrue and unfair, and the fact that you've reached back 12 years to find an example, when YC has funded thousands of startups since then, is evidence against what you're saying. YC has turned down many startups because they didn't think what the product was doing was right, and it has defunded and banned startups for ethical reasons over the years. It's not your fault that you didn't know this, since n…

YC is funding weapon manufacturers lol. Where are the ethics there?

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

#117

Post by dang »

mzajc wrote: post #114

Has this been manually delisted from the frontpage? It doesn't say it's flagged, but it's no longer on there. EDIT: looks like it's #157 now, I think I just misunderstand the ranking mechanism.

It set off the flamewar detector. Moderators haven't touched it, except that we turned off the user flags on the story. Otherwise it would be displaying [flagged] at the top.

We moderate HN less, not more, when YC or a YC startup is part of the story (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). This doesn't mean we don't moderate at all, of course; that would be too large a loophole. But we do moderate less.

For example, under normal circumstances our standard practice would be to downweight a thread like this one, because outrage posts (what we used to call riler-uppers*) are not normally on topic for Hacker News. We also might edit the title to be less sensational and more accurate and neutral. And we would leave the user flags on. In the present case, we've overriden all of that in order to follow the rule I just mentioned.

* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

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

#118

Post by ryandrake »

solardev wrote: post #86
pera wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your example sounds reasonable but it's not realistic: The actual use of this type of tools is to intimidate those workers who have outputted 9.8 items instead of the average 9.9 over the past week. This is how our society ended up making Amazon delivery workers urinating in fucking bottles inside their trucks.

You've spent 32.8 seconds urinating this shift, 1.3 seconds longer than average. Your bonus has been reduced until performance meets standards. At Amazon, the customer comes first! Congratulations! This week your urination schedule has improved. Enjoy a Kindle credit on us, good for any ebook license under $2.99. At Amazon, our partners come first!

I wish entrepreneurs would stop trying to make Manna[1] a reality. It's supposed to be a dystopia, people. Stop trying to create it!

1: https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

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

#119

Post by dang »

dttze wrote: post #115
dang wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's deeply untrue and unfair, and the fact that you've reached back 12 years to find an example, when YC has funded thousands of startups since then, is evidence against what you're saying. YC has turned down many startups because they didn't think what the product was doing was right, and it has defunded and banned startups for ethical reasons over the years. It's not your fault that you didn't know this, since n…

YC is funding weapon manufacturers lol. Where are the ethics there?

People have different views about what is ethical. The HN community itself is divided on the ethics of things like weapons manufacturing (a.k.a. "defense companies") or crytpocurrency (mentioned elsewhere in this thread). Having different views about ethics is not the same thing as having no ethics.

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

#120

Post by Brendinooo »

2099miles wrote: post #10

Tbh this isn’t that crazy. If you hire someone to do their job outputting 10 items per hour and that number is reasonable because a bunch of other workers you hired for the same job are doing it and 1 guy hits 1 per hour then that guys shouldn’t be doing that job. The outrage should be focused on the absolute meme of their ad video cuz they were like “lets literally have a convo with an individual but refer to them a…

I mean, if you're gonna make this kind of software to track individuals, you could, at bare minimum, throw a name in there so that the supervisor doesn't have start the chat with "hey number seventeen".

If literally having your identity reduced to a number in the process of getting yelled at for not being productive doesn't seem bad/crazy to you, I'm guessing there isn't anything I could say to move you.

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