Y Combinator Supports AI Startup Dehumanizing Factory Workers

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• tal@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  In most cases, I’d guess that factories don’t need cameras or AI image analysis to track output, because workers aren’t simply putting their output into a single pool with the output of other workers. The factory already has an easy way to know how much output the worker is producing, and, no doubt, has a record of that.

  There might be fields of work where that’s not the case, where it’s hard to know what any one worker is actually producing. But I’m dubious that it’s gonna be people doing assembly work in a factory.

  There might be more-valuable uses to record and analyze workers in a factory. I remember that in Cheaper by the Dozen, the father works as a motion efficiency consultant – was in the heyday of US doing assembly-line factory work, and he’d go in with a video camera, record workers working, and then break down how workers were working and see if there were different motions that workers could be trained to use to increase output.

  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_and_motion_study

  A time and motion study (or time–motion study) is a business efficiency technique combining the time study work of Frederick Winslow Taylor with the motion study work of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth (the same couple as is best known through the biographical 1950 film and book Cheaper by the Dozen). It is a major part of scientific management (Taylorism). After its first introduction, time study developed in the direction of establishing standard times, while motion study evolved into a technique for improving work methods. The two techniques became integrated and refined into a widely accepted method applicable to the improvement and upgrading of work systems. This integrated approach to work system improvement is known as methods engineering[1] and it is applied today to industrial as well as service organizations, including banks, schools and hospitals.[2]

  But I’m skeptical that trying to find workers who aren’t producing output in a factory using AI vision stuff is going to be all that useful.

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  • stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Time and motion studies can be incredibly effective. My company once wanted to automate some processes and sent me down there to watch the workers and identify the processes we could automate. Talking with the workers and filming a few of them gave me all the information to save well over $1M per year just by making the current process more efficient. Literally cost some people’s time to do the analysis, change some documentation and validate the improvements. Even the workers were happy because they had less waiting around for things to happen and were part of the process.

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• gladflag@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Surprised-pikachu.jpg

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  • darkkite@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    kinda is surprising. do they really have history in doing this?

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    • gladflag@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I’m unsurprised that a venture capital company is dehumanising workers.

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• MCasq_qsaCJ_234@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I wish Trump, Elon and their gang had it so they would realize that being efficient at work screws up your life.

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