Technology

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.

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.

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.

Actually Indians is the best type of AI

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

Always Infosys

I'm waiting for "generalized" actually Indians

All Indians.

No, it is a teenage boy from Mombasa.

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

"Actually Indians".

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

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

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

Their Turks were actually Indians. They were deceiving their investors!

Someday, that's what we'll be sold as "The Singularity". Some company like Apple or Google will offer us ascendance into the cloud, but we'll actually just become digital slave labor.

Actually Indian