Willy’s Outsourcing Problem

So by now you’ve probably heard about the infamous Glasgow Willy Wonka ripoff event that was a dismal disaster. If somehow you remained ignorant, basically one guy generated a bunch of AI content (including a script), outsourced everything to various actors and suppliers, and it was a mess. Fyre Festival for kids, as someone put it.

As the internet united around watching and dissecting the disaster, what I found fascinating is how this happened. Not because I learned anything new, but because it seemed depressingly familiar. It was a tale of outsourcing, taken to an extreme.

Most of the news has focused on the creation of AI content by the mastermind (disastermind?) Billy Coulls. It was obviously AI generated, from creepy imagery to hilarious misspellings and nonsense words. How AI generation is just a form of automation, of basically outsourcing. It was merely the most extremely hilarious example of Coulls having anyone but him do work.

There were people hired to bring in props. People hired to act. It seems like every damn thing was outsourced and then everyone was just supposed to make it happen. Needless to say that didn’t go well, nothing happened, everything got ad libbed and there was no chocolate. Not sure how you ripoff Willy Wonka without chocolate, but there you go.

All outsourced. There was no there there, just a bunch of AI art and some guy saying “good luck” before families paid tickets for this fiasco.

This may seem extreme, but outsourcing happens all the time. If you analyze and business or product you’ll likely find some outsourcing, because sometimes you save time and money with specialists. You’ll also find outsourcing backfiring as well, with poor service, lousy computer code, or questionable media design.

If you’ve ever tried to figure out who is responsible for something and had to drill through various organizations to get an answer or a refund? You get the idea. Outsourcing isn’t an evil thing at all, but too often its used to dodge responsibility, screw employees, and not actually do anything.

At the extreme, you end up with an event that isn’t about anything, is all fake, and ultimately is a disaster. Plus it’s hard to hold someone responsible – a little more coverage and forethought and we might haven’t discovered who did the Faux-Wonka fast enough for it to hit the news cycle.

There is nothing unusual about what we saw in Glasgow, it was just incredibly obvious. Many of us have been there before. Maybe we need to ask how much of our world is outsourced, and how much of that plays into the problems we face each day.

Outsourcing isn’t bad at all – I’ve been on both sides of it. But it can be misused.

Steven Savage

A Lack Of Features Is A Feature

There’s a lot of features in technology and games. This setting, this button, these new photorealistic graphics, etc. Seems like we’re drowning in features, or at least what people tell us are features.

Now some features are obviously B.S. Not sure we need an AI bidet. Some “user enhancement” is data tracking. With a great deal of effort I’m not going to talk about such “fake features.” I’m going to talk about features not being features, and their lack would be its own benefit.

Features that would be a feature if we didn’t have the feature, if you get my drift. Which now that I look at that sentence, you may not, but I like it so reread it until it makes sense.

We’ve all dealt with apps and technology that have so many features they’re now not useful. No one uses all of them, they’re confusing, and it makes getting what we want done harder. But also each unusable feature is also time put into code, put into support, and something that can break code and screw you up.

The onslaught of features is less useful, less stable, less reliable. It makes me wonder if software would be better off more modular for people who don’t need “the self-publishing graphic features that blow up your document once a day.”

Less features or modular features as a feature.

Let’s talk super-optimized realistic graphics. Great for say, rendering movie effects. But is it needed for Call of Shootbros: Apex Duty? Does everything have to look realistic? How much more time does this add to development, debugging, and support? Yes I’m sure it drives sales and brings in planned obsolescence, but maybe things could be easier.

Resilience and stability of a system, of development, etc. would be a feature we’re missing. Seems often when fancy new games come out on PC I hear about all sorts of graphics and stability issues.

What about applications that let us stay always connected? I’m not going to diss social media, but even when we ignore the ad-driven crap and the like, the speed is a double-edged sword. The feature is useful, but one we have to use with caution.

Some features are useful, but with discretion.

All of the above features do things and have their place. It’s just they may be overwhelming, pushed, or just things we didn’t think about. At this rate not having them, or having them restrained or gated kind of feels like a feature.

Hell, maybe we need to rethink the idea of “feature” in software and tech. Or maybe I just used the word way too much in this post.

Steven Savage

Take Some Responsibility

You probably heard the news: Air Canada had to pay up for something an “AI” chatbot said. This story saddens me as I love flying on Air Canada. Honestly in my trips up there the flight is often part of the fun.

Basically a guy asked an Air Canada chatbot on advice on canceling due to bereavement, it gave him advice on refunds that was wrong. He followed the advice and of course when he had to cancel, he didn’t get his refund, and made a small claims complaint to the appropriate body. Air Canada argued – seriously – the chatbot is a legally distinct entity and that the guy shouldn’t have trusted the advice, but followed a link provided by the chatbot which had gotten things wrong.

Obviously, that didn’t fly, excuse the really stupid pun.

As an IT professional who’s career is “older than One Piece” let me weigh in.

I work in medical technology (indeed, it’s my plan to do this for the rest of my career). We vet everything we install or set up. We regularly review everything we set up. We have support systems to make sure everything is working. This is, of course, because you screw up anything medical and bad things happen.

Also it’s because someone that goes into medical anything is usually pretty responsible. We IT folks are in the mix everyday and know the impact of our job. We also work with – and sometimes are or were – doctors and nurses and other medical professionals who get it.

I love working in this environment. If this appeals to you, I can honestly say check out working in medicine, medical research, and education. It’s awesome.

Know what? Other people using technology can and should take the same level of responsibility.

Technology is a choice. What you use, how you implement it, how you expose people to it, all of that is a choice. You built it or paid for it or whatever, you take responsibility if it goes wrong, be it a life or someone deserving a refund.

If the product isn’t what you thought? Then those who made it owes you an apology, wad of cash, corporate dissolution, whatever. But either way someone takes responsibility, because technology is a choice.

We’ve certainly had enough of moving fast and breaking things, which really seems to just result in enshitification and more and more ways to be irresponsible.

Besides, reputation is involved, and if nothing else saying “we don’t care of our technology on a website goes wrong” is going to make people question everything else you do. I mean, if you were on an Air Canada plane after hearing about this “sorry, not our fault” approach how safe are you going to feel?

Let’s try to be responsible here.

Steven Savage