'Hey Number 17 '

I'm shocked that anyone here is confused as to why this is controversial, to use a popular twitter phrase they were completely "mask off" on what they intended their tech to be used for. The demo was for a garment manufacturing sweatshop in which they identified a slow employee, called him by a number, and humiliated him, stopping just short of recommending a "corrective action".

This easily could have been spun in a positive light, imagine a commercial where they use their technology to discover that an employee was using a broken machine or that there was a bottleneck farther up the assembly line that could improve rates! But no, it was a cold look into how sweatshop operators view their workers.

I believe there's a bright future for software that enhances and amplifies our humanity in different ways. What form would that take? If I knew, I'd be working on it, but I sense a lot of opportunity in un-disenchanting technology for various demographics.

As for this tech: it should die in a fire. If the creators read this, they should understand that they are potentially inventing the shackles that they themselves will be bound in (albeit later).

I know some people working in low-cost sweatshops, where human labour is cheaper than automation, everyone is told they can be replaced within days, and the few machines you may find are usually older than the employees (or better yet, contractors) operating them.

Every sweatshop like that has high turnover rates, and micromanaging bosses that... let's say make sure these rates don't fall.

If these bosses are the target audience, then I guess the ad is well made? Identify bad employees faster so you can hire better ones quicker, yada yada. I can imagine how this promise can make someone want to buy the software, so fair play for the ad creators, I guess?

I really hope this project fails though.

The surprising thing here is that the startup/YC deleted the video. If the startup was based in San Francisco they'd be running billboards bragging about the productivity boost.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42380054

This is exactly why we need regulations that prohibit this. The upcoming EU regulations [0] seem to at least partially cover this, as employment is one of the high risk categories for AI systems. What that means in detail is still to be seen, but at least the groundwork is already there.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43152937

We were told the machines would free us from repetitive or injurious work, letting us pursue more meaningful and prosperous lives. Or at least they would be our partners we could leverage.

Instead, will they be the tools of our enslavement to The Man?

The upcoming AI powered laborer surveillance will not stop at sweatshop employees btw.

Consider nearly any professional sports team and the relative effort that athletes put in. There's very little disagreeing on objectives our outcomes (score/prevent points, win games) and incentives are directly tied to this (win more games, get more money).

And yet when you listen to what some of the highest-performing athletes say, they'll readily admit they don't go 100% effort 100% of the time. In fact, that's often a very bad thing to do because you can burn out quickly, and then the opposing team who paced themselves a little better starts running over you. However, there are spurts of intense activity where you really do go 100%, and then you quickly dial that back again to make sure you have effort reserved in the tank. Ideally you get down to 0 at the end of the game, but it's also readily acknowledged that sometimes this is out of your control, and often in quite significant ways, like the football bouncing weirdly when it popped out of someone's hands.

All of this is to say that there's a deep obsession in the corporate world around efficient teams performing labor, but when you get into organized sports where there's literal teams fighting for an objective, they don't chase "efficiency" that would amount to "time doing useful things on the field". Such a measure would be ridiculous.

What I'd love to know is: Assuming the founders pitched this idea for feedback to many people before getting this far, including to friends and family, didn't a single one of those people pull them aside and say: "Wait a minute, maybe stop and think about what you're actually creating here..." Could they find nobody in their circle of advisors who are able to empathize with low paid factory workers or at the very least point out the potential PR downside of this work? What kind of bubble are the founders living in? If I pitched this idea to a random sampling of 10 of my friends, I guarantee all 10 of them would retch in disgust.

Imagine if they had read something like Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming.

Instead of creating a digital whip for shallow (or even outright harmful) managers, they could have developed a QA tool grounded in real, deep thinking—one that respects proven principles of manufacturing.

There’s still time to course-correct, and embracing some of the foundational literature on the topic could make the difference.

[dupe] Lots of discussion earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43170850

I don't think the issue is necessarily the tool, but rather the execution. I think everybody can agree that improving efficiency is a good thing, and tools to track/improve it are a net benefit, but the way they approached it was abhorrent.

But seriously, who approved posting that (before it was deleted)?