A demo from Optifye.ai, a member of Y Combinator’s current cohort, sparked a social media backlash that ended up with YC deleting it off its socials.
Optifye says it’s building software to help factory owners know who’s working — and who isn’t — in “real-time” thanks to AI-powered security cameras it places on assembly lines, according to rel=”nofollow” href=”https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/MsF-optifye-ai-ai-performance-monitoring-for-factory-workers”>its YC profile.
On Monday, YC posted an rel=”nofollow” href=”https://www.optifye.ai/”Optifye demo video rel=”nofollow” href=”https://x.com/ycombinator/status/1894115085087297921″>on X (and on rel=”nofollow” href=”https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7300050840852086786/”>LinkedIn), according to a snapshot saved by TechCrunch.
rel=”nofollow” href=”https://x.com/AdamLerman5/status/1894215433366245457″>The video shows Optifye co-founder Kushal Mohta acting as the boss of a garment factory, calling a supervisor — in reality his co-founder Vivaan Baid — about a low-performing worker known only as “Number 17.”
“Hey Number 17, what’s going on man? You’re in the red,” Baid asks the worker, who responds that he’s been working all day.
“Working all day? You haven’t hit your hourly output even once and you had 11.4% efficiency. This is really bad,” Baid retorts.
After checking Optifye’s dashboard, the supervisor looks at the output of “Number 17” for 15 days, decides that the worker has been underperforming and calls the worker out on it.
“Rough day? More like a rough month,” he says.
The clip was heavily criticized on X, where @VCBrags rel=”nofollow” href=”https://x.com/vcbrags/status/1894454286370709858?s=46″>called it “sweatshops-as-a-service” and rel=”nofollow” href=”https://x.com/miranda_nover/status/1894197679447838954″>another deemed it “computer vision sweatshop software.” It also rel=”nofollow” href=”https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43170850″>sparked criticism on Y Combinator’s own link sharing site Hacker News.
Not everyone was critical, though. Eoghan McCabe, the CEO of customer support startup Intercom, rel=”nofollow” href=”https://x.com/eoghan/status/1894412092415017270″>posted that anyone complaining better stop buying products made in China and India.
Indeed, it’s not too difficult to find tech companies in China rel=”nofollow” href=”https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1816116508256549836&wfr=spider&for=pc”>touting a ‘sleep detection’ camera that uses computer vision to spot sleeping workers, for example.
Either way, YC ended up deleting the demo video from its socials, but not before it was rel=”nofollow” href=”https://x.com/archiexzzz/status/1894285551064285449″>saved by rel=”nofollow” href=”https://x.com/cdolan92/status/1894216778126959027″>several accounts.
Neither YC nor Optifye.ai responded to a request for comment.
The video’s likely unintended virality showcases growing anxieties over the rise of AI, especially in the workplace.
Most Americans oppose using AI to track workers’ desk time, movements, and computer use, a Pew poll rel=”nofollow” href=”https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/04/20/americans-views-on-use-of-ai-to-monitor-and-evaluate-workers/”>found in 2023. This is a segment of surveillance products sometimes called “bossware.”
That hasn’t stopped VCs from funding the space, though. Invisible AI, for example, raised $15 million in 2022 to stick worker-monitoring cameras in factories, too.
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