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Comment by zx8080 | Hacker News Reader

Oh no. It can't really be because "AI" frequently means "we fire employees to make more money. And by the way, we don't actually care about quality". Right?

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That mentality existed well before AI. See out-sourcing.

Strangely enough, I don't recall any companies advertising to consumers that they outsourced.

I’ve seen a few brands here and there boasting of the quality of the “select Asian suppliers” they moved their manufacturing to. It’s a clever way to preempt criticism that the brand is now no different from any of the competing brands that moved to China or Vietnam.

Is this in things like the clothing industry, where there exists a conversation around fast/cheap/outsourced fashion and has consumer pushback built in? If so, it makes sense they would get ahead of that. I'm not sure all industries bother to make that point/consumers really care.

I don’t know about clothing, but I’ve seen this a lot in the bicycle industry and in the outdoor equipment industry.

I guess they can say "Made in China, designed by Apple in California" in the packaging but at least they still take pride in the design. With AI it sounds you are disavowing also the authorship of the design.

thats more of a legal requirement rather than an active advertisement to consumers

Yes, but everyone kept it as quiet as possible.

Or have you ever seen an advertisement for US/EU tech that said: "Developed and designed by our software experts in the Philippines", or "Call our help line and we transfer your call to India for free!"

If it were outsourced to somewhere "nice", it would surely be mentioned: designed in Italy, built in Germany, hand polished by a Buddhist priest in Japan, etc.

> That mentality existed well before AI. See out-sourcing.

Consumers love outsourced call centers, don't they?

Most consumers don't care, as long as the quality is good. For a long time both audio quality and language skills of those outsourced call centers were really poor.

True, but companies seem more likely to publicly brag about their use of AI than about outsourcing their call center to another country.

Bombs existed before nukes. Is anti-nuke sentiment illegitimate?

Out-sourcing does still involve humans, to be fair. If the premise is that "humans prefer human output" then outsourcing would still be preferred, even if it is preferred less.

I think I hate interacting more with a person who refuses to think and deviate from the prescribed script. I at least understand an AI bot is incapable of providing a different answer. The person refuses out of indifference.

It’s terrible marketing. Telling someone “the product I’m selling will make you jobless and have no value to society” isn’t very persuasive. Outsourcing was not something promoted to the masses.

Sure! But it's now more convenient when it's written up-front in the company name!

Never waste a good alreadism!

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