I don’t even know what to say. How can you make jokes when reality already is making them for you? Have we finally entered The Onion Timeline?
AI company files for bankruptcy after being exposed as 700 Indian engineers - Dexerto
Submitted 10 months ago by Drukob@feddit.org to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
phantomwise@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
disconnectikacio@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I’ve got so indian answers from perplexity, and from chatgpt too… so this is why!
RadioFreeArabia@lemmy.cafe 9 months ago
I wonder how they would answer if asked about Kashmir
RalphFurley@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Anyone remember Cha-Cha?
altphoto@lemmy.today 10 months ago
Charming!
10001110101@lemm.ee 10 months 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.
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 10 months ago
“Sachin! Quick, look up the best way to impress a first date who is vegetarian!”
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 10 months ago
On the internet no one knows you are 700 Indian engineers.
TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world 10 months ago
"Welcome back to tonight’s episode of “Is it AI or 700 Indian Engineers!!” 👏🏾👏🏾 👏🏾
fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com 10 months ago
I’m picturing a room of people with protractors ray tracing Doom.
Afflictedlife@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
What do you mean the new llm I invested in is just 700 Indians in a trench coat?!
GenosseFlosse@feddit.org 10 months ago
AI stands for “actually indians”?
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 10 months ago
All Indians.
Batman@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I’m waiting for “generalized” actually Indians
ftbd@feddit.org 10 months ago
You mean A Guy Instead?
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 10 months ago
IP is “Infact Pakistanis”
squaresinger@lemmy.world 10 months ago
And what’s TCP/IP?
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Always Infosys
atlien51@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Goodbye! Onto the next one
mxc@programming.dev 10 months ago
Next do “self driving cars”
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Check the trunk for an Indian guy with a street map.
ICastFist@programming.dev 10 months ago
You mean the 40 horsepower is actually 40 Indians under the hood??
fritobugger2017@lemmy.world 10 months ago
in a trench coat
RaptorBenn@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Crazy that 700 professionals in india is cheaper than a compute/data centre.
Ledericas@lemm.ee 10 months ago
a data center isnt cheap, probably cost billions, a year to operate or millions. plus all the side effects, like power requirement and water waste.
RaptorBenn@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I can run a small model on my home pc, if i had access to those kinds of resources, i could run a AI data centre for profit, probably more rssource efficient than those 700 dudes as well.
milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 10 months ago
700 professionals in India probably make more coherent software than AI.
RaptorBenn@lemmy.world 10 months ago
100%, but i dont think that will stay true for too long.
RacerX@lemm.ee 10 months ago
They should have had 701
WolframViper@lemmy.org 10 months ago
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.
normalexit@lemmy.world 10 months ago
A lot of companies have been doing this for years. AWS literally sells this as a service: www.mturk.com
pyre@lemmy.world 10 months ago
i like that they named it after one of the most well known instances of fraud.
Lemminary@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Amazon SageMaker Ground Truth
Who names this shit? I want to have a serious talk with their mother.
jsomae@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
Next I’m going to find out ChatGPT is 700 thousand Indians typing really fast.
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Hurry! We need a photoshop of what a Col Sanders action figure would look like.
ICastFist@programming.dev 10 months ago
But all sharing the same keyboard? I need to understand the logistics behind that feat
jsomae@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
They wouldn’t be able to type fast enough if they weren’t using the same keyboard.
InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Oddly between 5pm and 6am Delhi time.
AA5B@lemmy.world 10 months ago
It would save electricity
GaMEChld@lemmy.world 10 months ago
That would explain why it sometimes gets sluggish!
Lenny@lemmy.zip 10 months ago
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
meme_historian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
seemefeelme@infosec.pub 10 months ago
Oh my god I miss peak dogelore so much. I wasted so much time making those memes, and I miss it 😢
FiskFisk33@startrek.website 10 months ago
Shit in My Hands?
Smoogs@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Is there any other way?
zarathustra0@lemmy.world 10 months ago
No, it is a teenage boy from Mombasa.
terminhell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
I…nvm
als@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
Robust_Mirror@aussie.zone 10 months ago
Septimaeus@infosec.pub 10 months ago
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.
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Their Turks were actually Indians. They were deceiving their investors!
Septimaeus@infosec.pub 10 months ago
Right that’s what I meant! The Mechanical Turk was a classic/early instance of fake automation.
Empricorn@feddit.nl 10 months ago
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!
SippyCup@feddit.nl 10 months ago
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.
bold_atlas@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Amazon be on smokin that meth again.
quetzaldilla@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I worked as an associate for a public accounting firm that does not ever advertise itself, because we specialized serving ultra wealthy individuals and you could only engage us if you knew of us through such circles.
One day, our office got a call from the personal assistant to someone very wealthy who is known for abusing ketamine, asking for an engagement on a very unusual and complex tax situation. A call was set up to discuss the scope of the engagement, because the partners have always been very particular about what clients they will take on, because really wealthy individuals are often very unpleasant, stressful, & frustrating to work with.
Apparently during the call the assistant was patronizing, like we should feel flattered that we were chosen by m’lord, and demanded non-negotiable terms that we would conduct our work exactly as told with no questions asked. They had even sent their own engagement letter for us to sign with them ahead of the call, and it was completely absurd.
The partners patiently explained that is not possible, as that is not how this type of professional relationship works, and declined the engagement.
The assistant was losing their mind, shocked we would turn such an opportunity down. They offered even more money and even some compromise, but the way they initiated the interaction set the tone to expect throughout the professional relationship.
I was very impressed by the partners in the sense that I knew they were incredibly greedy people, but they are so fucking intelligent and had such a great instinct to avoid clients that were going to end up costing way more money than they brought in, because us associates would absolutely refuse to deal with bullshit because it was already a super stressful job, and we were way too talented and incredibly expensive to replace if we walked off.
The self restraint must have been legendary, and exactly the right call, because all the professionals that do end up accepting end up getting embroiled in costly lawsuits and getting thrown under the bus.
Anyway, I hated that job and I wish I that quit sooner than I did. I got such bad burnout, I developed PTSD and now I prefer just living like a hobo rather than go back out there.
PS: Fuck capitalism and fuck Amazon. I refuse to buy anything from them ever again. Cancelled my credit card and told them to go fuck themselves. Fascists.
bluewing@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Sometimes you have a run in with a customer that ain’t worth having-- no matter how much money they pay.
WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 10 months ago
And many delivery robots are helped along by a remote worker.
CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world 10 months ago
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.
Fizz@lemmy.nz 10 months ago
Feels like it should be illegal to mislead people like that.
eRac@lemmings.world 10 months ago
On the other hand, the only way to get good training data is to generate data indistinguishable from the real-world scenario and then have humans mark it up the way you want the system to do it. You might as well have the data actually be from the real world and recoup some of the costs with sales.
GamingChairModel@lemmy.world 10 months ago
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.
eRac@lemmings.world 10 months ago
JWO hasn’t shut down. The system got polished enough for them to sell it to other companies, so they don’t need their own test-platform locations anymore.
JWO and similar systems do not reduce labor. The people working cashier become customer service attendants. These systems are valuable when the issue is throughput and sales are being lost at peak times. Airport convenience stores and stadium concession stands, for example, can get significantly higher revenue for the same footprint.
SouthFresh@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Chefdano3@lemm.ee 10 months ago
I’m being increasingly convinced that when we do develop true AI, it’ll actually be just an array of interconnected human brains in a secret facility somewhere.
Ledericas@lemm.ee 10 months ago
thats the repair station on enterprise, the AI was using kidnapped humanoids brains to power its processing capabilities.
sevan@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
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.
Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Plot twist, the future envisioned in the matrix basically does come to pass, except it’s not machines turning humans into power, it’s the ultra rich turning humans into processing power.
AizawaC47@lemm.ee 10 months ago
So essentially, wouldn’t that be similar to the Matrix movie? Except without the sea of pillars of bodies lined up and down in a cocoon sludge of goop. Connected by wires to feed off of our energy as a source of elixir. But a basement somewhere where we are jacked into a reality to where we can’t distinguish it between reality and virtual reality. I can definitely see that. The future is crazy for sure and how far we have reached with AI is bloody scary and horrific. Like not itself but in the progression aspect of it.
Ledericas@lemm.ee 10 months ago
repair station in enterprise, where the AI maliciously kidnapps humanoid aliens and uses thier brains to power ever increasing cpu
Chefdano3@lemm.ee 10 months ago
I was thinking more like Psycho Pass. The AI is its own entity, living in reality, doing the AI things that it was made to do, it’s just its processing power is a bunch of human brains linked together.
latenightnoir@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
The post-modern version of “three kids in a trenchcoat.”
huquad@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
Ahh yes, the mechanical indian
SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Indians all the way down
thefartographer@lemm.ee 10 months ago
700 Awesom-os
HeyJoe@lemmy.world 10 months ago
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?
orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts 10 months ago
wabafee@lemmy.world 10 months ago
So it’s just BPO after all.
Alistaire@sopuli.xyz 9 months ago
reminds me of the time when something with Amazon was Indian employees