Hacker News

Labour getting ever-granular in the age of micro-loans and RentAHuman.

> "Dashers have a new way to earn on their own terms"

The classic meaning inversion of precariousness and lack of benefits as a virtue.

> Tasks and the new app are currently available in select places in the U.S., excluding California, New York City, Seattle and Colorado.

Anyone know why that is?

(Claude thinks it's because those places have gig worker protection laws such that "classifying Dashers as independent contractors for non-delivery work is most legally risky")

There was a startup that did this in the mid 2010s named Magic, but was just via SMS. I used it a few times to get random things done, and it was really useful when it was cheap, then it became mega expensive.

Meta doesn’t even need to use this, they’re just going to be constantly recording all video and audio from those rayban glasses ;)

Smart move, Zuck.

I wonder who can give tasks. And how do they combat potential abuse cases. Surely there is lot of tasks that can be exploited for more nefarious purposes. Or just simply exploiting those that would do the tasks.

So, Quri (2009, now part of Trax), which was the startup copy of Proctor & Gamble's retail intelligence operations. But now like a sponge for any AI budgets not earmarked for hardware.

So they’re training a model

Interesting - same concept as Amazon Mechanical Turk when you could crowdsource tasks

Basically turning their delivery fleet into a crowdsourced data labeling workforce. Smart use of an existing network. The real question is whether dashers will still have jobs once the robots they're training are ready.

I had a terrible thought while out on a hike the other day. I'm almost loath to post it on HN because I worry some idiot is going to read it and think it's a good idea. On the other hand, if I thought of it, it's just a matter of time before someone else does.

Here is the idea: programmers may move to a DoorDash like model as well in the future. You may have full time employment but it will be at a much lower base salary than in the past.

Instead of working on "stories" you will work "contracts."

So someone wants feature X or system Y, that's a contract. You get paid on delivery.

Meaning, since it will become possible to build more complete / fleshed out things with enough requirements and so forth with the use of AI, the best programmers will really be the best 'coding drone operators.' Whoever can get the most jobs done in the shortest amount of time at the highest quality for the least tokens, they'll rule the roost.

Real compensation will then happen in terms of boosts to the base salary for getting contracts done, similar to how many execs are paid a low salary and then are expected to earn their keep by the bonuses and equity the earn for delivering results. (Yes, I know, delivering results, har har).

Are they supposed to open the food in order to take photos of it?!

Neat product expansion. Isn’t this what store employees are already doing though? Maybe it’s more for building datasets.

Definitely won't be abused by burglars, stalkers and spies.

Funny to see how creatively tech marketing teams are spinning their push for a permanent underclass in America.

No employment contracts. No benefits. No protections. Unpredictable wages. But hey, it's great because in this new model people have "flexibility" and "freedom".

Introducing DoorDash Deskilling.

If you haven’t figured it out by now the future of all work is transfer learning and encoding human action so that all possible action is mechanized and commoditized.

I’ve been obsessed with this problem for the better part of 20 years

The fact that we’re finally starting to see it realized is very exciting