'Hey Number 17 '

A venture capital-backed “AI performance monitoring system for factory workers” is proposing what appears to be dehumanizing surveillance of factories, where machine vision tracks workers’ hand movements and output so a boss can look at graphs and yell at them about efficiency. In a launch video demoing the product, founders Vivaan Baid and Kushal Mohta put on a skit showing how Optifye.ai would be used by factory bosses. The YC deleted video for sweatshop startup Optifye pic.twitter.com/vCJvm2HTce — Adam Lerman (@AdamLerman5) February 25, 2025 “Ugh, it’s workspace 17. Workspace 17 is the bottleneck. The worst performing workspace here,” one of the bosses says, while watching a video of a man making clothing in a factory. “Hey number 17, what’s going on man? You are in red,” he says. “I have been working all day,” the person playing the worker says. “Working all day?” the line boss replies. “You haven’t hit your hourly output even once today. And you have 11.4% efficiency, this is r ... Read full article.