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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

#121

Post by dang »

oefrha wrote: post #111
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…

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…

Ok, I appreciate the reply and am sorry about editing while you were replying. (Sometimes I leave a tag in my comments while I'm still editing them, but I didn't do that this time.)

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

#122

Post by Brendinooo »

2099miles wrote: post #13
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…

Continued rant : It’s kinda like a ruler. If you measure workers so that one’s doing 10x less/worse output than the average that’s good. If you compare workers down to the .01% difference in output that’s stupid and inhumane.

Yeah. I did new car prep for a dealership as a teen.

Ask me how many cars I did per day: totally reasonable. Make me clock in and out for every car I work on: bad.

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

#123

Post by oefrha »

dang wrote: post #121
oefrha wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ok, I appreciate the reply and am sorry about editing while you were replying. (Sometimes I leave a tag in my comments while I'm still editing them, but I didn't do that this time.)

No problem!

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

#124

Post by thepasswordis »

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.

>As someone who grew up in a 3rd world country and whose mother owned a clothing factory, this product seems...fine?

People in western countries find things like sweatshops to be objectionable.

>The response is an indication of how little people know about how their t-shirts and shoes are made.

People in western countries are well aware of how their shirts are made, and don't like it, and try to avoid it when possible specifically because they find sweatshop conditions objectionable.

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

#125

Post by ren_engineer »

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…

saw someone point out how they could have framed it as a way to reward good workers, but instead they showed how they can go after people underperforming. Just bad framing and shows how out of touch they are

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

#126

Post by happytoexplain »

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…

This is idealistic. In reality, we have more control over tools than how they are used - in general we have more control over changes earlier in the pipeline. Precious little control, but more control.

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

#127

Post by johnnyanmac »

ren_engineer wrote: post #125
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…

saw someone point out how they could have framed it as a way to reward good workers, but instead they showed how they can go after people underperforming. Just bad framing and shows how out of touch they are

If we're being real here: it's excellent framing for their customers who very likely does this but slower (and with an equal amount of empathy). The framing is excellent in terms of the basics of pitching: know your audience identify bottlenecks, present a solution to remove bottlenecks, and clearly demonstrate how.

The optics of presenting this in a public domain full of people who relate more to the factory worker than the middle manager is indeed tonedeaf, though.

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

#128

Post by biker142541 »

mattmaroon wrote: post #109
infecto wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Believe it or not, nobody suggested you need to run everything by a partner! Believe it or not, nobody suggested you need to run everything by a partner! I would expect someone to at least watch a video once before posting it in a congratulatory post on YC's feed. It is not a criticism of startup culture but watching that video I genuinely question how far quality has fallen?

I don’t think it’s fallen, I think they just repost press releases and 99.9% of the time it’s uneventful.

Still, did no one watch the press release video upstream of this post? Either they are posting garbage press releases without really reviewing the content, or (worse) one or multiple people genuinely saw no problem with it.

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

#129

Post by airhangerf15 »

lm28469 wrote: post #67
Suzuran wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody looks at people as robots. Robots are cheaper, do not require food or sleep, and do not have to be murdered when they attempt to unionize. Robots are far superior.

Hm, how do you explain that humans are still working in factories all around the world then ?

Because there are still a lot of things robots simply can't do, like picking items and packaging them. Seems incredibly simple, right? It's not. It's also the reason we won't have self driving vehicles before the collapse of western society.

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

#130

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

dang wrote: post #117
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…

> We moderate HN less, not more, when YC or a YC startup is part of the story

I believe this because it makes sense to me.

I think a habit of tempered reactions allows the understanding - that criticism is valuable in healthy doses.

Adding this: Having HN's stance plainly said is valuable too.

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