About tech companies quietly using humans to do work sold as AI.
Has this happened?
Yes 79 (59%)Not sure 22 (17%)No 32 (24%)
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Hacker News has set AI a lot of challenges over the years. Which ones has it met?
About tech companies quietly using humans to do work sold as AI.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
But why should it matter for customers who does the job? I mean, if you don't tell anybody, and pretend it's 100% AI then it's bad, but if it "will eventually become AI", and your investors and everybody interested in the technical details know how it's actually done, then what's wrong?
A true "AI" should be able to pass a Turing test, so for the customer, it should be indistinguishable, and shouldn't matter.
Of course, the privacy concerns are there, but then again, if it's a real "AI", then it may be worse for the computer to read your data than for a random low paid worker ;)