This has been a running joke in several projects I have been involved in, each time, apparently independently evolved. I never bring it up, but I am amused each time it appears out of the zeitgeist. It’s actually the best
Kind of ironic humor, the kind that exposes a truth and a lie at the same time, with just enough political incorrectness to get traction.
I can’t even count the number of of times I have shut down “AI” projects where the actual plan was to use a labor pool to simulate AI, in order to create the training data to replace the humans with AI. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a terrible idea for some cases, but you can’t just come straight out of the gate with fraud. Well, I mean, you could. But. Maybe you shouldn’t.
holy crap the backstory on amazon fresh. no wonder. meanwhile I thought they'd solved that through tagging or something.
I guess I should've known - I had read the articles on how scale ai had a ton of folks in the philippines...
Try replacing it with Germans, and now it sounds like a praise, because the stereotype around Germans and Germany is that way.
Is your problem that their phrasing invites stereotyping, or that the stereotype it invites happens to be negative? Because if it's the latter, do you really think that's the semantic intention here?
I told this AI joke to my Indian friends and they all laughed and said "true". Get a life, stop being a tone policing hall monitor, IRL people off Twitter aren't as easily offended by innocent jokes as you might think.
That sounds a lot like the classic “I have lots of black friends” line. But even if you do have Indian friends, there is a big difference between joking with friends vs what is suitable for publication in the public sphere.
I would also note that OP merely posited a thought experiment. They’re not policing anyone. “Get a life” is perhaps a little harsh?
Here’s another thought experiment. If you had a job interview for a senior position at Microsoft and your interviewer was Satya Nadella, would you make this joke?
>what is suitable for publication in the public sphere
That's why the persons, intent and context makes all the difference between something being funny and something being ofensive. And you could tell that statement wasn't in bad faith or meant to be derogatory.
>If you had a job interview for a senior position at Microsoft and your interviewer was Satya Nadella, would you make this joke?
Please don't move the goalposts to bad faith arguments, The casualness of the HN comment sections very different than the context of a job interview, hence my comment above on context mattering. Do you talk to your friends the way you talk to HR at work?
And yes, I'm sure graybeard Microsoft employees who worked with Nadella for a long time also make such jokes and banter with him behind closed doors and they all laugh, people are still people and don't maintain their work persona 24/7 or they'd go crazy.
My point is not that the statement was made in bad faith or was grossly derogatory. Personally, I am not gravely offended. However, I do think it's impolite and casually dismissive of an entire nation. In other words, I think it's in poor taste.
You obviously disagree, which is fine - I'm not calling you a racist - but to me, "get a life" is a pretty harsh reaction to someone raising a concern about a joke they find in poor taste.
The point I was trying to make about the job interview and Nadella, which I may have made clumsily, is not that we ought to use the tone we use in job interviews everywhere. My point is that Nadella is an extraordinarily accomplished Indian person and this "joke" would likely fall flat with that sort of audience. I think that's a decent barometer for whether the joke is in poor taste or not.
Again speaking personally, as a white dude, I avoid making jokes about minorities. That used to be pretty much common sense, although I recognize that there's a certain culturally ascendant viewpoint that disagrees with that. But my decision to treat people respectfully isn't about what's culturally in vogue, and I'm still willing to bet that a lot of the people of colour who laugh along when white people make jokes at their expense are thinking something else entirely.
It's the other way around - it's racist if you're a US American, because in USA every problem is somehow ultimately called or blamed on racism.
Elsewhere in the world, we'd all it xenophobia, or Indophobia if one has something against Indian people specifically.
Though in this case, it's driven primarily by economic stereotypes, coming from the country becoming a cheap services outsourcing destination for the West, so there should be a better term coined for it. The anti-Indian sentiment in IT seems to be the services equivalent of the common "Made in China = cheap crap" belief, and because it applies to services and not products, it turns into discriminating people.
It is mainly because the majority of scammers that we hear about are Indian. I am not sure it has anything to do with xenophobia, whether they (or we) call it as such or not.
Nothing racist about it, India is essentially the #1 outsourcing destination. Not everything that involves an explicit mention of ethnicity / origin is racist.
Not racist but offensive indeed. It's like relating school shootings to white people. A white child sitting in Norway might not relate and may find it offensive and insulting.
India is a country, not a color of person. It's more like relating school shootings to the US, where an American child sitting in the US would definitely relate and find it accurate.
Others have already mentioned why it is grounded in reality. Call your ISP, Indian picks up. You are being scammed? Probably an Indian. It is not racist, I have nothing against Indians in particular, but the trend is there and it is quite obvious, hence, reality.
If I replace "reality" with "truth", it does not work out because it makes no sense: "truth cannot be racist" makes no sense whatsoever. In relation or correspondence to what? It does work with reality, however.
But how is it racist? I am not afraid of Indians. I have nothing against some Indians, albeit I do have something against Indians who are celebrating something by stepping on manure, but since it does not affect me nor my country, I do not care what they do. UK might care though, it does affect them, but it does not make them racist either by not agreeing with some of their practices.
FWIW my best friend is South Indian. In the North, he is hated for unknown reasons, different caste or whatever, I do not know. He usually tells me everything about Indians that I do ask.
Another FWIW, he likes a barista (he is currently studying in the UK where he does not face any racism), and he came to me with help as to how to approach her. It is a good thing he did (he admitted it) because he would have ruined it by seeming so desperate, which seems to be a common trend among Indians, too. This is reality, too. To what extent? I do not know, but enough to notice. He is otherwise (despite being an Indian) a very well-mannered, curious, and smart person. He does seem to care much less about hygiene than one should, and blames things on diet, rather than just lack of hygiene. We discussed it in detail and he agreed, eventually.
While we are at it, I dislike Indian accents, too, generally. This is a preference. It does not make me racist. Do you think it does?
At any rate, if you have any questions, I am willing to answer (with his permission if it concerns him), but ultimately, I do not think it is racist.
downvoted for nostalgic use of Slashdot vernacular? we don't read these memetic cultural artifacts very often anymore. sometimes, you use them, just to keep them alive as a memento of a bygone era.
AI stands for "Actually, Indians."