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DoorDash Tasks
- wxw 8mo agoNeat product expansion. Isn’t this what store employees are already doing though? Maybe it’s more for building datasets.
- notatoad 8mo agoi think it's just a formalization of this https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/12/waymo-is-paying-doordash-gig-workers-to-close-its-robotaxi-doors.html https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/12/waymo-is-paying-doordash-gig...
- ocdtrekkie 8mo agoIt's essentially mystery shopping. There's a pretty big disconnect between what a large corporate HQ thinks occurs at their stores and what actually occurs at their stores.
- malfist 8mo agoIts mystery shopping without any of those pesky minimum wage requirements
- cheesecompiler 8mo agoLabour 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.
- vovavili 8mo agoNeither of these two things are something that DoorDash as a company can realistically do anything about.
- jrjeksjd8d 8mo agoIf only there was some other kind of employment model where people had regular shifts and they were paid consistently and transparently. Unfortunately I also do my office work by logging into an app at 6AM every day and bidding on a white collar job for a mystery amount of time and money
- vovavili 8mo agoI am pretty sure that DoorDash employs quite a few of people for their tasks at hand.
- DonaldPShimoda 8mo agoNotably not the people who actually make the company money, though.
- matthewdgreen 8mo agoDoorDash lobbies heavily against laws that would regulate labor, or classify its workers as “employees” and thus require they be covered by the minimal protections our country offers.
- reddozen 8mo agoIf the politicians are bought out by evil DoorDash's lobbying, why don't the voters just vote the politicians out? Do you have any evidence of a politician voting against their constituents' interests for personal gain?
- simonw 8mo ago> 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")
- malfist 8mo agoProbably exactly that. Those places have minimum wage laws for gig workers.
- flufluflufluffy 8mo agoI have no idea but when reading the article my mind immediately went to businesses having dashers take photos of competing businesses as some type of weird crowdsourced corporate espionage.
- netsharc 8mo agoI read it as "secret shopper/diner" kind of deal, so corporate can fail that local franchise for failing some rating for the burger...
- k33n 8mo agoThose jurisdictions stifle innovation. Thankfully, the vast majority of the US does not do that. Door Dashers in 99% of the US will now have a button to click that will put more money in their pockets. Very good!
- jimiasty 8mo agoInteresting - same concept as Amazon Mechanical Turk when you could crowdsource tasks
- vostrocity 8mo agoUber has also been offering MT-like tasks as gig work. https://www.uber.com/us/en/ai-solutions/ https://www.uber.com/us/en/ai-solutions/
- opengrass 8mo agoDefinitely won't be abused by burglars, stalkers and spies.
- seattle_spring 8mo agoRelevant: https://jackpoulson.substack.com/p/premise-data-confirms-secret-military https://jackpoulson.substack.com/p/premise-data-confirms-sec...
- codemog 8mo agoMeta 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.
- hhh 8mo agoThere 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.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- steezeburger 8mo agoI don't quite get how that would work. They were completing tasks to train models but via sms? Can you elaborate?
- fragmede 8mo agohttps://www.ycombinator.com/companies/magic https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/magic It is a VA firm.
- kotaKat 8mo agoThere's two seperate things DoorDash seems to be doing: "Tasks" in the physical world (taking photos of inventory on shelves, closing Waymo doors), and then some seperate app for training AI models. As for Magic, they were an SMS-based virtual assistant. They still exist today. They went downhill. https://getmagic.com/ https://getmagic.com/ See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34148402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34148402
- cucumber3732842 8mo ago> closing Waymo doors They can't reverse and brake?
- PUSH_AX 8mo agoSo they’re training a model
- nmacias 8mo agoSo, 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.
- cdrnsf 8mo agoIntroducing DoorDash Deskilling.
- Ekaros 8mo agoI 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.
- kjsingh 8mo agolol for a moment I read 'potentially combat tasks' and I thought ICE
- paxys 8mo agoFunny 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".
- loa_in_ 8mo agoIt's also appears to be a hustle side job employer in PR regarding employment MO, while clearly trying to capture the market for deliveries in weekday work hours.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- AndrewKemendo 8mo agoIf 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
- johnisgood 8mo agoStraight out of Black Mirror.
- stego-tech 8mo agoIt’d be nice if folks like yourself were equally obsessed with the systemic harms that would come about from solving or addressing this problem rather than charging full-speed ahead into the unknown at everyone else’s expense. Problems aren’t solely technological in nature, nor are their impacts and solutions. Never forget the humans behind the models.
- AndrewKemendo 8mo agoWhat’s that look like in your mind?
- stego-tech 8mo agoIt's understanding impact before taking action, especially on issues at scale (like labor displacement/replacement technologies). It's being vocal about shaping society in ways that reduce harms that naturally occur from inventions and technological revolutions instead of pawning it off to "other experts" or the workers themselves. It's engaging stakeholders beyond your comfort zone and social circles to build consensus, shape movements, and mitigate damage done while amplifying the good that would come from such a profound change. It's slowing or stopping work if society refuses to adapt, or targeting your output to harm those blocking the transformations needed to protect the commoners and guarantee prosperity is shared equally instead of hoarded. It's ostracizing those who choose to pursue such selfish ends while remaining willfully ignorant of (or worse, deliberately working towards) the harms they'll cause to others, applying negative pressure to influence positive reforms or warning others of the harm they'll incur by engaging in such socially-hostile behaviors. At its core, it's about understanding (the metaphorical) you are not a single person but a cog in a much larger machine, and that your actions reverberate throughout that machine in ways that are largely predictable, at least for a reasonable number of next-order impacts. Putting aside emotional intelligence like empathy and compassion for a bit, the practical intelligence needed to solve these tasks at a scale where robots or machines can displace labor implies a similar capacity to understand the harms and impacts of said solutions on a populace. To focus solely on solving the problem before you rather than acknowledging the impact it will have beyond you is to willfully reject accountability in favor of achievement, and we have enough vainglorious chuds in technology as-is.
- johnisgood 8mo agoAre they supposed to open the food in order to take photos of it?!
- wildrhythms 8mo agoNo, it's just an inventory check.
- _doctor_love 8mo agoI 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).
- bombcar 8mo agoCongratulations, you invented Upwork!
- _doctor_love 8mo agoYes, sadly. Except what I'm imaging would be even worse.
- platelminto 8mo agoSo... contractors? I don't understand how what you're describing is any different.
- _doctor_love 8mo agoIt's the same except much worse.
- balkanist 8mo ago[flagged]
- mandeepj 8mo ago> restaurant showcase their menu by taking real photos of their dishes, Not sure if I follow all that! What’s a real photo? So, no one from a restaurant can take a photo of their own dish which they just made? > helping a hotel make sure a delivery driver can find a drop-off location by taking photos of the hotel entrance Hotel staff can’t update Yelp, Google Maps location with the info? Or can’t drivers call the hotel or location? Also, it seems to be a very infrequent occurrence, Once per driver maybe?
- rythmshifter 8mo agoDoorDash already does this for items in stores to help the next person find that item. Its still hit or miss, as some of the pics are now years old, so they do need updating.
- seattle_spring 8mo agoInteresting. Seems similar to what Premise Data tried to do, and maybe would have succeeded had it not been for their slimeball CEO cratering their reputation https://jackpoulson.substack.com/p/the-covert-gig-work-surveillance https://jackpoulson.substack.com/p/the-covert-gig-work-surve...