Now, the company says it imagines an “Uber-type of setup” to fill their ranks, with gig workers logging in remotely to argue with customers from the comfort of their own homes.
So they’re using their spectacular failure as a chance to exploit their new ‘employees’ via the gig economy.
Fuck them. They have learned nothing about respect or decency, and I hope they continue to crash and burn.
So they’re using their spectacular failure as a chance to exploit their new ‘employees’ via the gig economy.
To the ruling class this was always the true lucrative appeal of A.I. and is precisely why they were willing to make such massive bets on a fundamentally broken technology.
The cherry on top is tech work used to be a threat to big businesses, especially big tech companies, because society considered tech work to be a respectable job. Big businesses/oligarchs saw this as an obstacle to destroying tech work as a decent paying career and A.I. was the perfect tool of propaganda to remove the obstacle because even most tech workers bought the lies hook line and sinker.
I stopped reading at Financial Tech startup. From that alone I know what kind of people we’re dealing with here.
Something about FinTech…it just attracts the worst possible people.
Klarna? The usury company? The “preys on kids who failed the Algebra 2 test on interest” company?
Klarna sucks balls. “We’re your friend! We help you buy things!*”
*APR 69%; yearly fee: Left limb. Firstborn children no longer accepted.
And how many of these Uberserfs will be located in developed countries making good salaries? None, you say?
Probably depends on the language in the target market, a lot of European languages are not that common in countries with cheap labor.
Loans for consumer products should be outlawed. Nothing good ever comes out of them.
I hope whoever’s running that company gets cancer and dies.
Reverse onion. I thought this was satire at first.
Now, the company says it imagines an “Uber-type of setup” to fill their ranks, with gig workers logging in remotely to argue with customers from the comfort of their own homes.
Alternate headline: “Identity thieves salivating at prospects of gain unvetted positions at consumer financial company”
Ah yes, Klarna. The proof that not everything is all right with Sweden. Proof that Nordic countries, too, are capable of incredibly dark things. …Do I need to continue?
Capitalistic assholes are everywhere. As long as you keep them in check, you can build a good system.
Sweden is one of the main exporters of Neoliberalism outside of its own borders.
The buy-now-pay-later company had previously shredded its marketing contracts in 2023, followed by its customer service team in 2024, which it proudly began replacing with AI agents.
A few months after freezing new hires, Klarna bragged that it saved $10 million on marketing costs by outsourcing tasks like translation, art production, and data analysis to generative AI. It likewise claimed that its automated customer service agents could do the work of “700 full-time agents.”
As Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg, “cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up having is lower quality.”
Also, just want to recognize this gem:
Though executives in every industry, from news media to fast food, seem to think AI is ready for the hot seat — an attitude that’s more grounded in investor relations than an honest assessment of the tech — there are growing signs that robot chickens are coming home to roost.
Klarna: Fire Now, Pay Later.
AI consumes way too much electricity and requires too much human attention (ironically) to be a viable replacement for most jobs. It can do simple stuff, but it’s not ready to operate like a human in most cases.
LLMs can do a lot of cool stuff that humans can’t but also can’t do a lot of stuff very well that humans can do a lot better.
I thought this was an onion article until I checked the comments
This seems to be a lie, there are no customer service positions available on Klarna’s career page.
They also have zero US based roles available. Canada and europe only.
Now, the company says it imagines an “Uber-type of setup” to fill their ranks, with gig workers logging in remotely to argue with customers from the comfort of their own homes.
They are likely hiring through an agency to avoid paying benefits
Collectively, we as people should stop utilizing a parasitic organization. Imagine corporations not giving jobs out yet expecting people to use their service/product.
Realistically they will hire someone in the dominican republic or some other nation with fairly neutral english accents on a call center farm who end up getting paid way under US minimum wage.
Tons of companies do this. Choice hotels, boost mobile… many many more.
Alternatively those gig workers will get paid even less than DR wages and be from far worse countries. Those DR call center farms literally do not allow you to bring any personal belongings onto the floor, or take anything from the floor. Way too easy to steal financial information if you can write it down somewhere. Now imagine gig workers who work remotely and how they could handle financial data… doesn’t seem feasible but maybe they have the liability angle figured out.
Is it because they realized that you can’t pick on an LLM?
Didn’t work out for ya, did it? The weird thing is when people think incompetent business decisions are one more reason to hate AI.
