The Rise of AI Book Ripoffs

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Rise of AI Book Ripoffs

Episode: The Rise of AI Book Ripoffs
Release Date: February 26, 2025
Host/Authors: Joseph Cox, Sam Cole, Emanuel Mayberg, Jason Kebler
Podcast: The 404 Media Podcast

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Introduction to the Issue

In this episode, the 404 Media team delves into the burgeoning problem of AI-generated book summaries flooding online platforms like Amazon and Apple Books. The discussion centers around the unauthorized and often low-quality summaries of authors' works, raising concerns about intellectual property, the integrity of content, and the broader implications of AI in publishing.

Unauthorized Book Summaries: A Growing Concern

Joseph Cox introduces the primary issue by recounting his personal experience with a publisher named Slingshot Books offering a summary of his book, Dark Wire, on Amazon.

"[04:32] Joseph Cox: ... it's really a bland overview... it's just like three or four pages of just the normal plot points."

He emphasizes the lack of depth and personalized insight in these summaries, which strip away the nuanced narratives and detailed character developments that define his work.

Jason Kebler concurs, asserting the likelihood of AI involvement due to the sheer volume and mechanical nature of these summaries.

"[07:53] Jason Kebler: ... there's no business model where this makes any sense whatsoever for a human being to be doing this work."

Detecting AI-Generated Content

The team discusses various indicators that suggest these summaries are AI-generated:

1. Stylistic Uniformity: The summaries lack stylistic flair and depth, presenting information in a dry, formulaic manner.
2. Generic Covers: Many summary books feature non-distinctive, often unattractive covers that lack the personal touch of the original author's design.
3. Proliferation Speed: The rapid release of numerous summaries by unknown publishers points towards automated generation rather than human effort.

Emanuel Mayberg adds that the absence of meaningful content and the use of bullet points are strong indicators of AI generation.

"[09:32] Emanuel Mayberg: The bullet point is a very good clue... the amount of books they've published... is just humanly impossible."

Platform Responses and Challenges

When Joseph reached out to Amazon, the platform responded by removing the infringing summaries, citing their content guidelines against unauthorized summaries.

"[10:37] Joseph Cox: Amazon said we limit the publication of summary books that are about other titles in our store...

However, similar summaries persisted on Apple Books, highlighting inconsistent enforcement across platforms.

Implications for Libraries and Public Access

Emanuel Mayberg discusses how services like Hoopla and OverDrive, which provide library access to ebooks, are grappling with the influx of AI-generated summaries. Hoopla has responded by implementing policies to filter out such content, removing hundreds of unauthorized summaries.

"[20:48] Emanuel Mayberg: They are kind of working on new policies on how they curate and filter out AI generated books."

Case Study: Optify and Ethical Concerns in AI Startups

Transitioning from book summaries, the podcast examines a controversial AI startup, Optify, backed by Y Combinator. Optify offers AI performance monitoring for factory workers, utilizing machine vision to track productivity metrics.

Sam Cole highlights the dehumanizing aspect of such technologies, where workers are reduced to numbers and efficiency rates.

"[23:27] Sam Cole: ... it's a startup called Optify... They are using machine vision to track workers in a factory..."

Jason Kebler points out the ethical implications, comparing Optify's practices to historical management methods that prioritize efficiency over worker well-being.

"[34:30] Joseph Cox: ... it's just this one company sort of said what all the other startups are thinking and probably want to say..."

The team criticizes the normalization of surveillance in the workplace, emphasizing the psychological and ethical toll on workers.

Backlash and Industry Response

The promotional video by Optify, depicting a dystopian work environment, received significant backlash on social media, prompting Y Combinator to delete their supportive posts. This reaction underscores the growing unease within both the public and investor communities regarding invasive AI applications in labor.

"[30:08] Sam Cole: ... they were panned on Twitter... they deleted some posts..."

Conclusion: The Future of AI in Content and Labor

The episode concludes with a reflection on the broader implications of AI's integration into creative and industrial sectors. The hosts stress the importance of maintaining human integrity and ethical standards as AI technologies continue to evolve and permeate various aspects of society.

"[38:13] Joseph Cox: ... AI politics, hacking toes... It's the perfect 404 Media story."

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Notable Quotes

• Joseph Cox [04:32]: "It's just a really bland overview... three or four pages of just the normal plot points."
• Jason Kebler [07:53]: "There's no business model where this makes any sense whatsoever for a human being to be doing this work."
• Emanuel Mayberg [09:32]: "The bullet point is a very good clue... the amount of books they've published... is just humanly impossible."
• Sam Cole [23:27]: "They are using machine vision to track workers in a factory..."
• Joseph Cox [34:30]: "It's just this one company sort of said what all the other startups are thinking and probably want to say..."

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Final Thoughts

The 404 Media team underscores the necessity for vigilant oversight and ethical considerations as AI technologies continue to disrupt traditional industries. Whether it's unauthorized book summaries undermining authors' works or AI-driven surveillance marginalizing factory workers, the episode calls for a balanced approach that safeguards human creativity and dignity in the face of technological advancement.

For more in-depth discussions and exclusive content, consider subscribing to 404 Media at 404media.co.

Transcript

[Susan Ettlinger]

The PC gave us computing power at home. The Internet connected us, and mobile let us do it pretty much anywhere. Now, generative AI lets us communicate with technology in our own language, using our own senses. But figuring it all out when you're living through it is a totally different story. Welcome to Leading the Shift, a new podcast from Microsoft Azure. I'm your host, Susan Ettlinger. In each episode, leaders will share what they're learning to help you navigate all this change with confidence. Please join us, listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

[Joseph Cox]

Hello and welcome to the 404 Media podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, Both Online and Ira. 404Media is a journalist founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404 Media Co as well as bonus content every single week. Subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Gain access to that content at 404 Media co. I'm your host, Joseph, and with me are 404 Media co founders Sam Cole.

[Sam Cole]

Hello.

[Joseph Cox]

Emmanuel Mayberg.

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

Hello.

[Joseph Cox]

And Jason Kebler. Hello, Jason and Sam. We have an event coming up that both of you are going to be at. What's the rundown? What's happening?

[Jason Kebler]

Yeah, we're throwing a party at south by southwest on Monday, March 10th. We're going to have a kind of like live panel podcast thingamabob about AI Slop featuring me and Sam and our friend Brian Merchant who runs Blood in the Machine. And then we are going to have a party after that. So to register, you can go to our website and there will be a post by the time you read this because we don't have one yet. I know, but the URL for it is really long and difficult.

[Sam Cole]

It's in the Show Notes. Show Notes.

[Jason Kebler]

Show Notes as well there too. It's Lu Ma Hffhi9sn.

[Joseph Cox]

Yeah, click it in the show notes and. Or the post which we will now write.

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

I love a live air URL read. That's really good pod.

[Joseph Cox]

It is.

[Jason Kebler]

People like it.

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

Speaking of AI Slop, let's get to our first story. This one is by Joe. The headline for the story is a slop. Publisher sold a rip off of my book on Amazon, Joe. In case you don't know though I can't believe you don't know because he's done a very good job of promoting his book, but he wrote a very successful book. And you, I think, probably were looking up the book on Amazon and other stores and what did you find? While you were doing that.

[Joseph Cox]

Yeah.

[Jason Kebler]

Were you buying your own book again?

[Joseph Cox]

Yeah, I actually buy tens of thousands of copies like Trump Jr. Style. Didn't he do that to get it to the bestseller list?

[Jason Kebler]

I believe so, yeah.

[Joseph Cox]

I have not done that, to be clear. No, I haven't bought any copies of my own, even though people do that to game the system. But I was, as I sometimes do, embarrassingly, just checking it on Amazon to see what the ratings are and that sort of thing. It gives some indication of, I don't know how much people like it or hate it. And as I was doing that, I came across this other listing on Amazon. To be clear, you don't need to buy the book on Amazon. You can do it anywhere. It's just they have their metrics and their star rating, whatever. But I'm looking through and I see this listing for a summary of Joseph Cox's Dark Wire, which is the name of my book. And I'm like, huh, that's pretty strange. I wasn't expecting that. And then I go through and immediately I'm interested because of the crappy quality of this listing. There's a really generic orange cover. The description seems pretty generic as well. And just going through the other summary books uploaded by this publisher called Slingshot Books, it just seemed like a very low effort churning out, I would say, of these book summaries. So I decided to spend $4.99 of our subscribers money on this piece of shit, basically.

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

So you buy it, you read it with great interest. What do you find? I have read your book, but I mean, would I be better off just reading this instead? It sounds like possibly, yeah, you just read the summary.

[Joseph Cox]

It's fine. It gets the basic gist. I mean, on one hand it kind of does summarize the book, but literally what it's doing is that it is breaking down every single chapter. And I think there's like 30 or something chapters in the book and it's just rather than them being, I don't know, 20, 25 pages from what I can remember of all of this narrative detail, it's like three or four pages of just the normal plot points. But it. Well, the example I give in the article that I wrote was that my opening of the book is about this drug trafficker called Owen Hanson. And there's sort of all of this detail about him. And I spoke to him and I've followed his escapades and his case for years. And you go to the summary book and it's just two pages of Hanson did this, Hanson did that, Hanson did this. And it's, I guess, the rise and fall of him. He does fall. He's arrested by the father, FBI. But it just misses out all of the rich detail, essentially. So to answer your question, it was just like a really bland overview. Now, maybe that's the point of a summary book that we have Cliff Notes, and I think we'll talk about that maybe a little bit later on in this segment as well. I'm not against summary books and I've used them when I've been studying as well. It's different when you see your work and your intellectual property basically summarized on a digital piece of toilet paper, basically. And then I took it and I showed a screenshot to you all, I think, in our group chat. Emmanuel, what did you think when I showed you the screenshot? Because I don't know whether it's AI or not. That's one thing we can't really determine. But I showed you the screenshot, I think. What did you make of that?

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

Yeah, so I've been looking and reading a lot of these over the past couple of weeks for reasons that we'll get into soon. But also I believe we talked about on the pod a couple weeks ago, I wrote about AI generated books making it into libraries. And a lot of these books are these summary books. So I've read them and there's just a certain style to them which is like you described, which is very plain and then correct, well written English, but with no stylistic flair or feeling for place and narrative and all of that. It just feels kind of soulless. So I definitely had that style and immediately seemed AI generated to me. And while we don't have a smoking gun here, there's a lot of contextual clues that we can get into later about why we're pretty confident that it's AI generated.

[Joseph Cox]

Yeah. And then I also showed it to Jason and sorry, Jason, to put you on the spot because I didn't actually include this in the article, but I just remember you responded to it by saying there's no way this isn't AI Generated due to the sheer number of book summaries that this publisher was churning out. What do you mean?

[Jason Kebler]

Yeah, I just mean if you think about it for one second, they're publishing dozens of summary summary books and it's some publisher you've never heard of before. There's not a human being reading and analyzing these in a formulaic way in the year 2025. It's just like Occam's Razor it's so easy to get an AI to summarize, and it's so easy to get Amazon to publish something that there's just like no business model where this makes any sense whatsoever for a human being to be doing this work. And by that I just mean, like, it's the type of AI slop that we've seen over and over and over again. And if you were to enter this market right now as a human being saying, like, oh, I'm just going to read Joseph's book, and then I'm going to read some completely unrelated book and I'm going to do this multiple times per day, publishing multiple formulaic summaries that are bad. I don't know why you wouldn't have an AI do it.

[Joseph Cox]

Yeah, it's like just way more likely to be AI, especially this year. And there's actually one comment left on the article from a subscriber, Spencer Bauman, which I'll just read out now. Quote there's no way. It isn't AI. Something about the way the chapter title is written screams chatgpt to me. Similar things of articles that are individual paragraphs, paraphrase bullet points with a bolded headline at the start of each one.

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

The bullet point is a very good clue. And I just want to run through if you're listening to this and you see a book on Amazon and you're not sure the contextual clues that we usually use are it's the COVID You'll either see that it's a clearly AI generated cover. If it's a book about someone, it's really easy to tell because they don't really look like themselves. But also you can see just like artifacts in the images, it's the content of the book, which has the same style that the commenter just mentioned. And then I think probably the best one, as Jason mentioned, is you click on the author or you click on the publisher and you see a Do they have any online footprint? A lot of these AI publishers do not. They just exist on these storefronts and then the other one is just the amount of books that they've published. So usually you'll click on one of these publishers and they've published 300 books in the last year and usually it's the same author and that is just humanly impossible for someone to do. And I think this was all true about your book summary.

[Joseph Cox]

Yeah, I'll just read a tiny bit of Amazon's statement because I reached out to Amazon for comments and they removed that summary of my book, but then also dozens of others. When I went to go write the article, there was only one summary left. And I don't know whether that was just created after the banhammer or somehow it dodged it. I'm not entirely sure. But Amazon said we limit the publication of summary books that are about other titles in our store and the title you brought to our attention is no longer available for purchase. We have content guidelines governing which books can be listed for sale, and we have proactive and reactive methods that help us detect content that violates our guidelines, whether AI generated or not. Interesting in that the statement is more on we don't want summary books rather than we don't want AI books. Which I think is interesting because Sam, you previously wrote about AI generated foraging books. I think specifically on Amazon. What happened there? Because this story is just about my book and it was funny because it happened to me. But that story you wrote about could have had real world consequences.

[Sam Cole]

Yeah, I mean, it's just a similar thing, but with a different topic. I wrote about this also with knitting and crocheting tutorial books. But the mushroom blend was interesting because that's actually something that, like, if you take the wrong information from, you could die from. It's like they were identifying these books, were identifying mushrooms that were potentially poisonous, as safe to eat, like, good to cook with. They're very slight, like, subtle differences in, you know, like a death cap mushroom versus one that you can like actually eat, put on pizza. So, you know, if you don't know what you're looking for, you just say, oh, that's a wild mushroom. But obviously the consequences are more serious than that. So, yeah, it's, you know, it's people preying on beginners, people preying on people who don't want to spend more time, you know, researching something deeply. They just want the quick answer. It's just, I don't know, it sucks. It's sad to see it happen. It's sad. It was sad with the crocheters too, because that's such a, like a handmade, obviously craft that real humans have to be involved in. So, you know, it's, it's kind of eroding all these like, knowledge systems that we, I guess we've taken for granted. But I never would have imagined that they would be under threat like this, you know, five, ten years ago.

[Jason Kebler]

I think when it's a summary of any other book at this point you can pretty safely assume that it's AI generated. Unless it's from like SparkNotes. And even then I bet that SparkNotes is, is this is. I have no, no information to base this on, but I bet that they're utilizing AI in some way, shape or form at this point. And it's just like, I'm not even sure what the utility of a book summary is at this point. Like, I believe you could probably ask ChatGPT at this point, give me a summary of Joseph's book. And it probably would give you something like. I don't. I don't really even know. It's a. It's a weird type of content that has like, suddenly popped up on Amazon and all over the Internet, but I don't think that it's like, popular or. I just. I don't know.

[Joseph Cox]

Yeah, I mean, you're right in that you could just go to ChatGPT and get the summary that way if you have, you know, paid access or free Access whatever to ChatGPT, that's basically what the books are doing anyway, right? You're just paying some publisher five bucks to basically enter the prompt for you. I mean, look, I don't know how this publisher or other one's got my book. Obviously you can just pirate it. Like, I'm not going to dance around it. That's absolutely possible. Obviously. Now, did they pirate it or something like that? I don't know. But you could probably even. Or ChatGPT could probably still build a summary just based on the public media coverage that it had as well. So, I mean, there are different ways of going about it and not to pull it all on Amazon, as fun as that is, it is also on Apple Books and I'm looking at it right now and the exact same summary is on there and it hasn't been taken down. Not that I'm trying to go on a crusade to remove every summary of my book. It's more funny than anything, but Apple didn't respond, whereas Amazon did.

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

There's no utility to you, Jason, the reader, but the librarians I talked to are pretty confident that it's a numbers game where if they blast this summary across enough platforms, they're going to catch some minuscule number of people who are searching for Joe's book and get the summary on accident and make enough money to make it all worthwhile. Like, that's what the scheme is in general. From. From what I understand, it's just like getting an errant click and getting the money for sure.

[Jason Kebler]

That makes as as like an AI content slop factory. It makes sense. But as a like, curated human being summarizing these books, I Don't think that it makes a lot of sense. I do know there is that startup that like gives you audio summaries of books that advertise on a lot of podcasts. I don't remember the name of it and I never tried it, but that, that was popular for a while because it was like, you can read these self help books in seven minutes and you know, learn what to learn what the four hour work week says. But I've never tried it and I, I don't know how popular it is. Also you can just ask ChatGPT for a summary of Joseph's book. I've just learned.

[Joseph Cox]

Oh yeah, can you read just a tiny bit? It says it's shit.

[Jason Kebler]

Says it's great. So I asked for a summary of darkwire by Joseph Cox. And then it just said like, you know, a three paragraph summary. And then I said, can I have a chapter by chapter summary? And then it said, now it reasons because deep seek reasons so you can like see what it was thinking. And it first said, am I allowed to do this? And then it said summaries are permissible, so I'll proceed without including direct content. So I guess it's not quote quoting anything from you. But it says chapter one, the Encrypted Underworld. Focus introduces the reader to the ecosystem of encrypted phone networks. Discusses how certain companies market specialized devices to criminal clientele, emphasizing privacy features and anonymity. And then it like kind of goes on and on. And it never says, that's wrong.

[Joseph Cox]

That's not what happened. That's not what happens in chapter one. That's interesting.

[Jason Kebler]

Yeah, it never produces the word anom, which is kind of interesting.

[Joseph Cox]

Which is the main, the main company is about.

[Jason Kebler]

Yeah, right.

[Joseph Cox]

Huh.

[Jason Kebler]

Yeah, I don't know. Is chapter five called the COVID Takeover? Do you remember?

[Joseph Cox]

No, it's not called that. Okay, well, dude, I'm on the slot publisher side now. At least they like got it right.

[Jason Kebler]

Not a very good summary.

[Sam Cole]

The summary of mine is pretty spot on, unfortunately.

[Joseph Cox]

Go on.

[Sam Cole]

Yeah, yeah, I mean it's just they're pulling from a lot of the sources are online, like media coverage of the book. So it's pretty accurate even without having access to the book probably. But yeah, it's pretty, it's correct. It's very specific. You know, it's like you could get a lot of summary out of the title, which is how sex changed the Internet. Internet change sex. It could bullshit pretty easily off of that. But it's very specific about like talks about like bullet board Systems and only fans and.

[Joseph Cox]

And sources like. Are they mentioned the people you spoke to?

[Sam Cole]

The main source is next big idea club.com which is like a blog that I gave an excerpt to. But what it's pulling from is like the. The subheadings from that blog, not necessarily the chapters. But then again, it's like my book is on Libgen, free to download that people torrented. So it's like it could. It could access the whole thing if it wanted to, probably. But I don't know if it has that capability.

[Joseph Cox]

I'm sure mine is as well.

[Sam Cole]

That's how, you know, you made it.

[Jason Kebler]

It reads like, you know, like fifth grader did a book report.

[Joseph Cox]

That's chatgpt man. Emmanuel, you touched on some of your library stuff. But to close the loop on that. Close the loop. The hoopla. No, doesn't matter. Briefly, remind us what the library story was and then what has happened since. Because we did talk about it on the podcast, but there's been some developments.

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

Yeah. So Hoopla is a service that provides public libraries with access to ebooks. So if you want to get an ebook from your public library, you're probably going through Hoopla or this other service called OverDrive. To illustrate how common the summary AI generated summary book issue is. Hoopla responded to the story. Eventually. They emailed a bunch of librarians and addressed a bunch of the issues that I mentioned in the story. They are kind of working on new policies on how they curate and filter out AI generated books. They removed a bunch of AI generated books. But I thought it was very telling that Hoopla said that it is just removing all book summaries from its platform as a rule. Like, no more book summaries with the exception of HMH Books, which is the publisher of CliffNotes and maybe Spark Notes as well. But they haven't mentioned that. But they did call out Cliff Notes as being the one publisher that's allowed to have summaries, but all of them are gone. So, for example, I mentioned this one publisher called IRB Media that had hundreds of summaries up on Hoopla. Those are all gone.

[Joseph Cox]

And I mentioned Cliff Notes briefly in my one as well, because I think it's the one that everybody knows. But to speculate slightly is the reason that they're kind of exempt in Cliff Notes is just because, well, they're legit. You know what I mean? And there's more to it. They're study guides rather than subraries.

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

Exactly. I was gonna say I've never used SparkNotes, so I don't really know what those look like, but I have used Cliff Notes in my life. And what I rem remember is like, I don't know, if you, if you get the Cliff Notes on Moby Dick, it's not just like, here's what happens in every chapter. It's like, oh, like it is commonly interpreted that the whale signifies yada, yada, yada, and it gives you, like, historical context. You know, it's just like it tells you something. There's some analysis being done and presented to you about the book so you know what to tell your teacher when you pretended to read it.

[Joseph Cox]

You know, Cliff Notes, the original cheating with ChatGPT. I mean, I don't know. I never use them. That makes sense. All right, let's leave that there. When we come back after the break, we're going to be talking about another AI startup that is dehumanizing factory workers. This time it's a lot more explicit, I would say. We'll be right back after this.

[Dena Temple Reston]

Hackers and cybercriminals have always held this kind of special fascination.

[Joseph Cox]

Obviously, I can't tell you too much.

[Sam Cole]

About what I do.

[Joseph Cox]

It's a game.

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

Who's the best hacker? And I was like, well, this is child's play.

[Dena Temple Reston]

I'm Dena Temple Reston, and on the Click Here podcast, you'll meet the them and the people trying to stop them.

[Sam Cole]

We're not afraid of the attack. We're afraid of the creativity and the intelligence of the human being behind it.

[Dena Temple Reston]

Click here. Stories about the people making and breaking our digital world.

[Joseph Cox]

AI machines, satellite engine ignition.

[Dena Temple Reston]

Click here and lift off. Click here every Tuesday and Friday, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Joseph Cox]

All right, and we are back. This is one that Sam wrote. Why Combinator supports AI startup dehumanizing factory workers. We'll play the video in a second for our listeners, but Sam, maybe just give us an overview of what is this video exactly and where did it come from?

[Sam Cole]

Yeah, so this is something that was going around on Twitter last night and this morning that I caught there. And you know, something is pretty bad when it's getting panned on Twitter. Even though it's a Y Combinator startup about AI. Twitter at this point is very much like the tech bro boosterism world. And even those guys were upset about this. So, you know, it's bad. So, yeah, it's a startup called Optify. AI spelled super dumb as these startups are. O P T I F Y E.

[Joseph Cox]

Optify, by the way. That is the worstify. I've ever seen. Spotify is one thing. This is crazy.

[Sam Cole]

Just adding letters when we don't need them.

[Joseph Cox]

Y. I like could not understand it. My eyes were like going all cross eyed when I was trying to read the title.

[Sam Cole]

It's bad. And I keep calling it the wrong name in my head and forgetting what the actual name is. I'm like sinking. Defies like I don't know. It's Productify. I don't know. But okay, so it's a startup that quote unquote, it's for AI performance monitoring system for factory workers is their proposal here. In a very small nutshell. They are using machine vision to track workers in a factory and see what their productivity levels are, how many like per items they're making, what their output is, their efficiency quotas, things like that. It's like this whole like dashboard that they're advertising, like bosses can see. And then it shows you exactly who on the line is going too slow or isn't being efficient. And that's the idea and the video in it. The founders of this startup are kind of doing like a skit and one of them is a boss, one of them the worker. And we'll just, we'll play the, play the clip.

[Joseph Cox]

But yeah, we'll play that now and then listeners will have some understanding what we're talking about and then we'll come back.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Oh, it's workspace 17. Workspace 17 is the bottleneck. The worst performing workspace here. Hey, number 17, what's going on man? You're in red. I've been working all day. Been working all day. You haven't hit your hourly output even once today and you had 11.4% efficiency. This is really bad. It's just been a rough day. Rough day. More like a rough month.

[Sam Cole]

Yeah. So basically, if, as you can tell, this is productizing, bosses, being to workers is the real kind of innovation here. As Emmanuel put it when he was reading and editing the story. It's not that this is like a new technology, that surveillance on the line is something that has never happened before. We see it happen with Amazon, we see it happen all over the place with different warehouses and also just with, you know, like computer jobs and remote work. But the shocking thing about this isn't the technology. It's the blatant normalization of turning around, calling one of your workers by a number and mocking them about having a rough day, a rough month, and being an ass to your workers and being this cruel overlord while they're working on your production line.

[Joseph Cox]

Yeah, and we'll bring the Y Combinator stuff in in a second. But just while we're talking about the video itself, like is this video a bit or like what do we make of that?

[Sam Cole]

I don't think it's a bit. I think if it were a bit, it would be more overt. I think good satire is often toes that line, but it's not, if it's satire, it's not good satire because it just is not overt enough for people to say this is a send up of this type of AI. And I don't think it's a bit because Y Combinator is celebrating it, congratulating them online. Their website says they're backed by Y Combinator. Y Combinator is like, it's a venture capital firm that creates, makes companies huge. Some of the biggest companies in the world have come out of Y Combinator. So I don't think it's fake, I think it's real. I think these guys are just like really out of touch for various reasons that, you know, we don't have to get into. But like, it's just, it's a bad look for everyone involved, basically.

[Jason Kebler]

Well, I think also it's not just a venture capital firm, it's a startup accelerator that picks ideas that it thinks are not represented in the market yet. And so they end up being like, the market doesn't have this yet. So we are going to help you incubate this idea and like turn it into a reality. And so I don't know, it would be very odd for Y Combinator to, to like, it's just, it's not satire. Like, it's, it's just not. It's, it's like a promotional video for their idea.

[Joseph Cox]

Well, speaking about Y Combinator's support slash backing, they deleted some posts, right? By they, I mean Y Combinator. What happened there exactly? Like, what did they delete?

[Sam Cole]

So Y Combinator had posted on Twitter and we know this because of Treen Scotts. And also you can see it in like just, you can find the URL through deleted posts, people replying to Y Combinator. But they were saying they were introducing Optify AI as building AI performance monitoring for factory workers. And then they link to a link about their launch and then they say congrats on the launch and then they tag the founders on Twitter and on LinkedIn. They also made a post which I found the LinkedIn post through just like Googling Y Combinator and Optify. And it comes up in the cache which you can still see what the what? The LinkedIn post part. Like the first sentence of it was, or whatever. And it was a similar thing. It was like, you know, congratulations on launching to Optify. And they're gone now. They're deleted now.

[Joseph Cox]

Any idea when they deleted? Because the Vicus, the. The promo video, which was in very, very poor taste that was going viral yesterday. Did they delete it like after that, or do we not really know? They deleted it at some point.

[Sam Cole]

I'm pretty sure it was after that because that's what is all over Twitter. Like the replies to that tweet that's now deleted. Are people being like, are you fucking kidding me? Like, this is disgusting. So I think they got a lot of backlash and they were like, oh, like, instead of, you know, like hiding replies or closing comments or whatever, they were just like, just nuke the post and we can pretend we did not.

[Joseph Cox]

See it, or you can pretend that we never supported this company, which is dehumanizing people by calling them a number.

[Sam Cole]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we'll see. I mean, I, like, I reached out to Y Combinator, obviously, to ask, you know, what's. What's going on with this? Why'd you delete the posts? Are you backing this company still? What's going on there? And I haven't heard back yet, but we'll see. It's also all over optifies site that they're backed, you know, quote unquote, backed by My Combinator, which is obviously a big, like, stamp of approval for the industry. It's like, oh, that's a big deal. Like Jason said, it's like, that's, you know, that's kind of a mark of like, oh, you're serious. Serious people think you're serious. So, you know, this is worth looking at.

[Joseph Cox]

It legitimizes startups in the eyes of other startup founders and investors and all of that sort of thing. Emmanuel, while I think you edited this, correct me if I'm wrong, but while we were talking about it in our group chat, I think you did bring up that there was a video from a few years ago or something where somebody did do a bit about this. Right. Again, I'm not saying that we know this one's real. It's bad by Y Combinator. It's just funny that this is. You can't really tell. Exactly. And then there was a bit earlier. What was the deal with the. The earlier one? Was it somebody just mocking this sort of thing?

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

It was a. I don't think it was. I think it was. It was either A joke or. It was one of our favorite, you know, local dipshit, you know, like local artists makes a statement videos. But it was a video of a coffee shop and it was using machine vision that looks almost exactly like this actual startup to kind of track the productivity of the baristas in there. And that went extremely viral because it freaked people out. It seemed so dystopian. And it's one of those videos that kept going viral even though it turned out that it wasn't a real technology from a real company. It's not something that people are actually using. So it just, it's. It's funny that. I mean, it's funny slash horrible that this thing that was not real and everybody thought was horrific is now actually a real company. And I don't know, to me, sort of seems inevitable. As Sam said, this type of thing exists in many workplaces. Whether you're a white collar and people are tracking what you're doing on your computer and your mouse movements and your keystrokes, or you're at an Amazon warehouse and people track how many packages you're handling in an hour and how long your trips to the bathrooms are, et cetera. It just the idea that you can use machine vision to track whether you're tracking it well or not. The idea that you can track any worker's productivity with just putting a camera in there. I don't know if this company will survive. I don't know if this will become a real thing. But I feel like the idea is just so attractive to bosses that there's no way that we're not going to see something like this eventually.

[Jason Kebler]

Yeah, I mean, it's already here, like both of you have already said. I mean, it kind of has its origins in this idea called scientific management, which Edward Anguasso used to write about a lot for. For us at Motherboard. But it's like, based on management practices from like the 1880s and 1890s that has largely become like algorithmic management on Uber, Door, Dash, etc, And then, yeah, it's just like this, this. It's just a difference of degree, not of kind, really. But I think that the video here was so dehumanizing and so up that it went viral. But as you both said, like, a lot of people work under conditions that are like this to some degree, where they're being managed by a computer software or their output is being like their worth as a worker is entirely based on numbers and whether a computer thinks they're doing a good job or not.

[Joseph Cox]

Yeah, I Guess just last question, Sam, to wrap it up, what does this show us? Is it just this one company sort of said what all the other startups are thinking and probably want to say and they just fucking went for it and broke through? Or is it a mask off moment for labour and AI? It seems like to me that a lot of companies would want to do this, but they would not all be as stupid to make this video.

[Sam Cole]

Right? Yeah, again, these are, these are, I don't want to like shit on these guys too much, but like they're, they're computer science students at Duke University. They're in an extreme bubble as far as interacting with normal people. I'm sure they have little life experience to speak of. Their families come from, you know, they own, they've said, they say in their bios their families own manufacturing plants, which, yeah, I mean, yeah, and it's a whole complicated conversation but that we're definitely not going to get into here. But it's something that we see over and over again in the AI startup world that this sort of thing is very much applauded. Like efficiency numbers. It's like timing your bathroom breaks and even, even if you're the boss, people impose that on themselves. Like they say, you know, I slept three hours, I slept on the floor, you know, I slept at the office, I worked. My efficiency rate, you know, my heart rate, whatever. It's quantifying of your work and your worth actually has really damaging effects on workers, whether that's yourself or your employees and your factory workers. Honestly, it's like this is not going to go well no matter what, doesn't go in a good direction. And a few people have pointed out, just like on social media. And I think I had the same thought. It's like it would be way more efficient just to talk to that worker and be like, instead of being like, hey, you know, number 17, what's your deal? What's your problem? And then he says, I'm working, I'm working all day. And you just say, well, it looks like you've had a bad, a rough month or whatever. It's like just talk to people and say, hey, what's up? What are the inefficiencies on your section? What are the infinities that you're seeing without threatening them with being fired? Probably is a really efficient way to, cost effective way to get to the bottom of what's going on at your own company. But instead people want to distance themselves from, from their own workforce, from the actual labor being performed. So that they don't have to think about it. And they can just look at a graph instead of a person making sweatpants, you know, below them, how they view it. So, yeah, I mean, it's, it's just. And yeah, like you said, it's that they're saying it out loud. It's like, oh, like he admit it. It's just very blatant in this case because they are so young and they come from that society where it's just like they've, they've seen it play out their whole lives. So they don't have that kind of filter to know, oh, it's not cool to just put this out there. You have to put it behind a few layers of like, politeness or whatever, or pretend it's productivity focused, when really you're just like, how hard can I abuse people before they break? Sort of mindset. I don't know. It's a huge, it's a huge, complicated thing stemming out of a very goofy startup, frankly. So we'll see. I don't know. I hope it doesn't have legs, honestly. But like, we've established it's something that's already happening. So putting it out there in the open is powerful for sure.

[Joseph Cox]

All right, we'll leave that there. If you're listening to the free version of the podcast, I'll now play us out. But if you are a paying 404 Media subscriber, we're going to talk about a particular AI clip involving Musk, Trump and Toes. It's the perfect 404 Media story. AI politics, hacking Toes. You can subscribe and gain access to that content at 404 Media co. As a reminder, 404 Media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you do wish to subscribe to 404 Media and directly support our work, please go to 404 Media co. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You also get to listen to the subscribers only section where we talk about a bonus story each week. This podcast is made in partnership with Kaleidoscope. Another way to support us is by leaving a five star rating and review for the podcast. That stuff really helps us out or just tell your friends about it too. This has been 404 Media. We will see you again next week.