this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2025
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

reminds me of the time when something with Amazon was Indian employees

[–] [email protected] 242 points 1 week ago (3 children)

You mean to tell me this AI company was actually 700 Indian engineers in a trenchcoat?

[–] [email protected] 118 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Actually Indians is the best type of AI

[–] taladar 61 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 71 points 1 week ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 week ago

Used to be thousands of if-statements in a trench coat. But even that got offshored 😮‍💨

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[–] [email protected] 200 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Isn't this exactly what was exposed at the Amazon "Just Walk Out" stores? Turns out all the cameras and sensors weren't good enough, so they paid thousands of people in India to watch videos and correct checkouts. They basically just outsourced the position of cashier, while pretending it was all done automatically!

https://gizmodo.com/amazon-reportedly-ditches-just-walk-out-grocery-stores-1851381116

[–] [email protected] 109 points 1 week ago (9 children)

Peoole aren’t appreciating just how bad these things are because they’re misinterpreting it. The goal of what they are doing here and with Amazon was never to just fake the technology right. The goal was to fake that the technology existed by using humans to do an automated thing and then to leverage that into making it actually automated.

But essentially what that means is theyre inventing technology that hasn’t been invented yet and selling it to you and the reason for doing so is to replace you with technology before it can even technically happen.

It’s essentially like someone building a new automated factory and telling workers at their other locations that they can’t be hired there since it’s automated but then someone goes inside and finds out they’re just using child laborers until the robots are ready and also robots haven’t been invented yet.

They’re using blood to grease wheels that don’t even exist to turn yet.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yes, it's the exact same practice.

The main difference, though, is that Amazon as a company doesn't rely on this "just walk out" business in a capacity that is relevant to the overall financial situation of the company. So Amazon churns along, while that one insignificant business unit gets quietly shut down.

For this company in this post, though, they don't have a trillion dollar business subsidizing the losses from this AI scheme.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I built some of the components that went in to the test locations. Amazon had absurdly tight tolerances for the parts they were buying. They effectively wanted a shelf that was also a scale, and the tolerances they demanded weren't really necessary. So it was an insane expense but they paid it and wouldn't hear otherwise.

My company also made most of the lockers they're using in places like Whole Foods, and Amazon insisted on controlling the entire design process themselves. They sent us prints, we made parts. They made it very clear that that was the relationship they wanted, so we complied. No test runs, THAT would be too expensive. Let's just make ten thousand parts and put them together.

I would like to be very clear that in an industrial setting, this is unusual. You need something specific, you call a company that makes things like it and see if they can make what you need. You have a conversation about what you need it for and how many you want. The relationship is personal, you get to know the people around the region that you need stuff from.

Amazon swooping in with a heavy purse and a list of demands is weird, when someone kicks in your door with a stack of prints and enough money to keep the entire plant in overtime all year, it's hard to say no to that.

So the first batch of prints they send is wrong. Parts do not line up right and the doors don't even fit. We didn't discover this until 70% of the components had already been painted.

Second batch they assure us addresses the problem, we need to start over.

My friends, it did not address the problem. Half the changes they needed to make they didn't. The doors still did not fit.

3rd try, we lied and said we needed some extra time because a different client had elbowed in with a large order while they were redesigning. We had an intern recreate every print in CAD and test fit it, we ran a single batch of test pieces to assemble one row of lockers and as we were doing that they sent a revision.

They finally got their lockers, and asked for basically book dividers but insisted again on insanely tight tolerances.

After the dividers went out we stopped taking their calls.

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[–] [email protected] 127 points 1 week ago (7 children)

AI stands for "actually indians"?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

Always Infosys

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[–] [email protected] 102 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 101 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Gets "AI"

looks inside

Badly paid employees

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago

"Actually Indians".

[–] [email protected] 98 points 1 week ago (4 children)

What’s next? Am I going to find out my AI girlfriend is actually a real woman? Smh my head, can’t trust anything these days

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 week ago (1 children)

No, it is a teenage boy from Mombasa.

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[–] [email protected] 74 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Ahh yes, the mechanical indian

[–] taladar 31 points 1 week ago

The Indian Turk or short IT-worker.

[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Crazy that 700 professionals in india is cheaper than a compute/data centre.

[–] [email protected] 72 points 1 week ago (6 children)

700 professionals in India probably make more coherent software than AI.

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[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 week ago (8 children)

Next I'm going to find out ChatGPT is 700 thousand Indians typing really fast.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago

It would save electricity

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

That would explain why it sometimes gets sluggish!

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 week ago

What do you mean the new llm I invested in is just 700 Indians in a trench coat?!

[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 week ago

First to push forward and invented AAI, Artificial Artificial Intelligence.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 week ago

in a trench coat

[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 week ago
[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I hope this isn't part of a larger trend of human labor being devalued because companies pretend it's just machine labor. I hope that's literally impossible.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 week ago (2 children)

A lot of companies have been doing this for years. AWS literally sells this as a service: https://www.mturk.com/

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Amazon SageMaker Ground Truth

Who names this shit? I want to have a serious talk with their mother.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I wonder if they produced better results than an AI would

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago

Probably. A startup flush with cash could probably afford to hire good talent.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 week ago (1 children)

"Welcome back to tonight's episode of "Is it AI or 700 Indian Engineers!!" 👏🏾👏🏾 👏🏾

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

I'm picturing a room of people with protractors ray tracing Doom.

[–] Grandwolf319 35 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 week ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 week ago

On the internet no one knows you are 700 Indian engineers.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago

They should have had 701

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Next do "self driving cars"

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

You mean the 40 horsepower is actually 40 Indians under the hood??

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago

but it turns out all that cash was going toward a workforce of over 700 Indian engineers, rather than an AI.

I doubt much of that cash was going to their workforce. Should have though.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (8 children)

I'm being increasingly convinced that when we do develop true AI, it'll actually be just a massive array of interconnected human brains in a secret facility somewhere.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Weird headline. I know they mean “exposed as another mechanical turk ‘AI’ company” but headline appears to imply simply having Indian engineers was the problem.

Edit: added explanatory link to the technical term to clarify

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago

The post-modern version of "three kids in a trenchcoat."

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (3 children)

It says it's been doing this for 8 years. So, since AI hasn't even been around that long, does that mean they were always like this and just lied that they switched over to AI? I wonder if they just encouraged the current employees to field the response and then they would run it through another AI to provide answers. Either way there had to be some delay which I feel would have been the dead giveaway?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 week ago

Using machine learning including neuronal networks, generative AI based off of neuronal networks and so on exist well longer than since the past few years.

"DeepDream" was released as a software ten years ago. Research into LLMs exists since at least the 90s.

"AI" also has been a hype term in many industries since a decade, just that it reached the general public with the ChatGPT hype.

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