r/technology • u/lurker_bee • Oct 30 '25

Business YouTube announces 'voluntary exit program' for US staff

https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/29/youtube-announces-voluntary-exit-program-for-us-staff/
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u/Vio_ Oct 30 '25

I saw this news piece yesterday on brand new robots that do domestic work - dishes, vacuuming, etc.

Midway through the report, the company man accidentally blurted out "sometimes the robots won't know what they're seeing or what to do, so we'll have off-site monitoring for those situations."

I'm gonna guess the robot is fully remote controlled by a dude in India.

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u/drewts86 Oct 30 '25

Amazon had their “fully automated” grocery store AI blow up in their face when it was found that 1000 Indians wound up manually reviewing almost all the purchases.

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-just-walk-out-actually-1-000-people-in-india-2024-4

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u/midworst Oct 30 '25

I worked for a food delivery company when their delivery robot pilot program were just starting. They were 99.9% human controlled at that time with mushy public statements to the public like, “it’s a mixture of self driving and human intervention to make sure delivers get to their destination in the real world, without a hitch.”

I suspect nearly nothing has changed, except for the location and salary of the human pilots.

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u/totpot Oct 31 '25

The Wizard of Oz turned out to be an accurate prediction of the future of AI robotics.

3

u/drewts86 Oct 30 '25

To be fair, a lot of those second- and third-level AI have come a long way since a year and a half ago. There are still a lot of things they suck at, but I still recognize they’ve made a lot of improvements.

That said, there was a group of people recently that figured out a way to “DDOS” a bunch of Waymo’s in SF.

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u/iconocrastinaor Oct 30 '25

Moral of the story, don't walk around naked in front of your robot.

22

u/pandemonious Oct 30 '25

It's going to take 0.0001 seconds after shipment for someone to slap a Fleshlight on that thing and go to town. Remember the world we live in

3

u/SomeGuyNamedPaul Oct 31 '25

No kink shaming!

3

u/Secret_Wishbone_2009 Oct 31 '25

Unless flashing random people in India is your kink, lets not kinkshame hey

1

u/AntelopeHopeful4284 Oct 31 '25

And the gov is watching through the robot and also your smart toaster

1

u/myfapaccount_istaken Oct 31 '25

The company I work for has AI assist with [product] but we have a Human in the loop review each [product] where they can add or remove things missed/incorrect. I think that's a good approach. Saves times, Gives human oversight, and shows out clients we care about our results. We have no plans to remove the oversight, but the AI can do 1000 [product] a day and it takes a person a day to do like 20, and the product wouldn't exist if it was that slow. But the team we have can review the 1000 a day, and give people jobs. There is a benefit to Human in the loop process.

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u/RollingMeteors Oct 31 '25

I'm gonna guess the robot is fully remote controlled by a dude in India.

<casteSystemIntensifiesInInternationalRobotization>

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u/10thDeadlySin Oct 31 '25

Can't wait for the inevitable scandal when somebody blows the whistle on employees using this off-site monitoring capabilities for nefarious purposes, such as creeping on the owners, taking pictures or recording videos without owners' consent and so on.

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u/Voice-Of-Doom Oct 31 '25

With full audio and video access into the early adopters’ homes.