Reading this, I'm so glad that in all of the EU it is illegal to fire someone purely based on a software decision. There's a minimum level of humanity that we should extend to everyone. Letting a known faulty AI decide if someone will have money for food tomorrow is way across the line.
I'm not surprised that treating humans like cattle on their way to slaughter is hugely profitable. But I'm not sure we want to operate large companies like WW2 prisoner camps. Even if you truly don't care about the poor souls who have to work there, the people who turn insane from this treatment will still live in your country and maybe their kids will meet your kids in school and "educate" them on the cruelty of life.
It's best not to push anyone down the mental abyss in the first place. And yet, here we (software developers) are, developing new monitoring and automation systems and deciding to delete someone's entire online life (Google account) without any oversight (AI) in the name of "efficiency" (higher profits for shareholders that we never met and never will).
>Letting a known faulty AI decide if someone will have money for food tomorrow is way across the line.
So is the implication here that humans are less faulty, or that there's something intrinsically wrong about an AI making this decision rather than a human?
If the former, then this is an issue that the technology will probably eventually solve. If the latter, well... that doesn't seem very justifiable, to say the least.
If Amazon has leaned too far in the direction of automation without oversight, then we'll see other firms fail to adopt these same practices. But it seems pretty inevitable to me that we'll see many more AI-driven hiring/firing decisions in 10 years or so than fewer. And if some sclerotic regulations try to slow this down, that will likely be unfortunate for consumers.
People have historically complained a lot about firings not being based on an objective formula. Now the complaint is an objective formula is being used.
> WW2 prisoner camps
For starters, those camps would shoot anyone who tried to leave. Not the same thing at all.
Why the AI sidesteps responsibility? It's like stabbing someone with a screwdriver and saying screwdriver did it! Are regulators in the US that dumb or corrupt to allow it?
For not working and being their own self they are not hired.The lower level workers were not adopting the e-commerce discipline of promptness.We require JBezos like monitoring and action.
> Reading this, I'm so glad that in all of the EU it is illegal to fire someone purely based on a software decision.
Why do people treat working for a company as something different from selling any other services or goods? If there was a law that limited your ability to cancel a gym membership or going to a different supermarket, you would rightfully object — it's not a government's business to get involved in your voluntary business transactions. Why treat a company that hires workers differently?
Reading articles like this makes me appreciate living in the EU. It's not always great, but clearly it could be worse.
Article 1 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights states "Human dignity is inviolable. It must be respected and protected."
I feel like that would be broken were we to allow this behaviour towards workers.
Article 1 seems like a feel good statement that isn’t objectively measurable thus can mean whatever you want it to mean. Which is clear when you look at the living conditions of refugees in some EU countries.
After Brexit human rights are no longer guaranteed in the UK as witnessed in the way the Home Office operates. Boris is also hell bent on making London a haven for big tech free from EU Tax regulations.
Everything could be worse, but let's not be blind to the problems we face here in the EU.
First of which, if your rights are being infringed, then you have to wait for years and years to be able to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, only after all of your national appeals have been depleted. Which, when you know how national governments can destroy you trough legal proceedings (eg. Aaron Swartz, physical/psychological torture by police/prison, etc) is a HUGE problem.
The truth is there's no place for human dignity anywhere in the industrial capitalist civilization, because it's all about profits. Remember the Aquarius? European governments were competing in cruelty, refusing to welcome these refugees. At one point, a french-colonized island (Corsica) proposed to receive them... which the national government denied.
Or take a look at police abuse cases. How many people have to die or lose an eye before we acknowledge the police is a terrorist organization and needs to be treated as such? TRIGGER WARNING: this is just from the gilets jaunes protests, there's a lot more injuries/deaths due to "non-lethal weapons" -> http://lemurjaune.fr/
Lately, the French government has renewed its tradition to persecute anarchists (in the 19th century, anarchism became illegal and the ancestor of Interpol was founded to repress anarchism) and keeps on rounding up more people for "criminal organizations with a terrorist purpose" (association de malfaiteurs à caractère terroriste). This happened in anti-nuclear struggles in Bure as well as for spraypaint in Toulouse (though not with the terrorist label), in anti-GSM struggles in the plateau des Mille-Vaches, but also against activists who are not accused of anything beyond thought crimes (the 8th of december arrestees), one of which is being held in solitary confinement since early december as psychological torture in an attempt to break him down before trial.
No, human rights are never compatible with a Nation State. Because a Nation State is a construct based on violence and exploitation. In my humble opinion, we should burn all States and corporations if we want a tiny chance to live free. But since today is french national day, let's take a minute to remember that this day celebrates July 14th 1789 when armed peasants took the Bastille prison by force and liberating everyone, marking the start of the revolution. Kissing the arse of the french army's défilé is an insult to the french revolution. Admittedly, all of France is an insult to the french revolution and its ideals of freedom, equality and siblinghood. Nique la France! Feu aux prisons!
I would have preferred EU to have stayed purely economic bloc without Brussels ideology and bureaucracy. Make sure that capital, people and goods move without too much friction and the rest will sort itself out in couple of generations.
I am a fan of Amazon's digital products and devices (the Kindle e-reader, Fire TV), but have noticed I buy fewer and fewer physical products from Amazon.
This is in part, because of ideological reasons, but also because other online shops offer a better service than Amazon, and are also reasonably priced.
In particular, I dislike that it seems to me more and more products are sold by third party sellers. I don't mind paying a bit extra from a retailer with a good reputation in my own country. I don't want to have to deal with a seller who is based in the other side of the world.
Recently I made a large order of cycling gear from a specialist shop. I couldn't imagine buying it from Amazon, as I would be concerned some would be counterfeit, or only be available if it came from about 5 different sellers, all dispatching at different times.
I've read similar articles so many times but they all lack one thing - solutions. Seriously, what should we do about it?
Yeah, I agree that workers shouldn't be working so hard that they can't even go to the bathroom.
Would we have a better world if Amazon didn't exist? I personally doubt it. So, it's not Amazon per se, it is the system, isn't?
So, what are the solutions? How do we make it better? How do we minimize the suffering of these people? Or is it actually working pretty well and we should accept that some people will struggle badly no matter what the system is?
Honestly, I think the only solution is, to make it easier to start a small business, and help and encourage people to start them, and then fix the tax policy, so companies as amazon would pay the same effective tax rates as a mom-and-pop bakery.
Amazon needs workers, workers need jobs. If you increase the number of jobs and decrease the number of unemployed, people can say "no" to shitty jobs. This is currently happening in parts of USA, due to people moving around, some illegals leaving and new standards, where shitty employers are forced to close down, because they cannot get workers, and competent workers moving "up". And getting workers is easy... just offer a better working enviroment for more money than their current workplace is offering, and you've got one.
The solution is to go beyond a competition based society. No matter how good the people running these companies are or want to be, competition will force their hand to create things like this. If it's not them, it'll be someone else. I'm sure we could find a way to encourage innovation without this competitive system.
If you consider America to be a corporatocracy, it’s hard not to consider it to be an authoritarian state at this point.
The company I work at recently had everyone install some advanced monitoring software on every company’s laptop. Being fully remote, this effectively gives root access to someone in my home 8 hours a day. Sure, it’s a “company laptop” and all of that, but something feels extremely invasive about it and I don’t like it one bit.
I remember reading stories in the late 90's/early 00's of workers in the Amazon warehouse becoming millionaires thanks to stock options and big jumps in the stock price. It sounds like that does not happen anymore except for employees in the offices. Perhaps employees in the offices know recognise that Amazon has overstepped its bounds but stick around waiting for vesting and/or (smaller) increases in stock price.
Massive success is rare and being there early is even more rare. It still happens. An artist who painted murals for Facebook's office got paid in shares that were worth $200M after IPO. Any current employees have no expectation in similar stock gains any time soon, that kind of explosive growth happens before IPO.
Nobody in their right mind would want to employ humans in a megacorp machine like Amazon.
The goal isn’t to mistreat humans or even to provide them with jobs. The goal is to gather data, build models, and replace the human components over time.
> Workers are voting with their feet. Turnover is high at both Teleperformance, the largest call centre employer (around 80% annually) and Amazon, 150%.
> If you don't like Amazon or what they are doing to their workers, don't shop on Amazon. If you think working for Amazon is bad, don't work for Amazon.
"If you don't like what Hitler is doing, just ignore he's murdering millions of people".
No thanks, i'd rather organize to have this guy killed to restore just a tiny little bit of justice on earth.
You obviously have a very privileged position where you don't NEED TO work for Amazon. Lots of people are in a different position and i hope you appreciate that.
Also, you obviously have no idea about the rich history of communism. Cuba and Venezuela can hardly be described as communist ; i'll refer to Emma Goldman on describing what is or isn't communism beyond the labels: https://infokiosques.net/IMG/pdf/there_is_no_communism_in_ru...
Wow… a guy that directly employed almost 2 million people and indirectly improved the lives of tens of millions of dependents in the Amazon ecosystem is a dystopian person.
Bezos is far from perfect, but do we really think that that was his primary consideration of building and growing Amazon?
Pretty much every organization that gets large enough tends to rot from the inside and get dystopian, despite the efforts of the founders.
Anyone remember “don’t be evil”? Right.
Maybe, just maybe, he resigned because he couldn’t deal with the dystopian aspects of how Amazon grew.
My point is that it’s not a good idea to put the fact that a huge organization becomes “dystopian” at the feet of its founder.
Bezos was well aware and a part of this growth. He was there personally when the company I worked for was acquired. He offered a silly anecdote about a breakfast octopus to the then CEO.
In some ways the company has lived on past the CEOs desires to maintain it, but it's also not the same place. It's effectively turned into a way to push overstocked amazon wares. What was a big push to bring temporary employees on full-time 2 years prior has probably been disassembled for Amazon style hiring. After I left a enclosed cage and turnstile was added to the warehouse employee entrance (probably loss prevention, not totally unneeded, but who wants to feel like a prisoner at their job).
Is it really that unfair to blame the guy who profited most from it? If as you say increasing the size of an organization inevitably leads to a dystopian behemoth shouldn't we condemn people who do exactly that to grow their wealth?
These programs are weapons of literal war. They exist to deprive people of income while enriching people who don’t need the wealth and shouldn’t have it (because they turn it into power which they use for further ill).
It’s amazing to me how many software engineers claim to be taking a moral stand by refusing to work for defense contractors, yet are willing to write these surveillance and “optimization” (worker squeezing) programs that give more power to employers… which is just as bad if not worse. The US government at least does a mix of good and evil things, whereas profit-motivated employers are clearly out for one side.
[+] [-] fxtentacle|4 years ago|reply
I'm not surprised that treating humans like cattle on their way to slaughter is hugely profitable. But I'm not sure we want to operate large companies like WW2 prisoner camps. Even if you truly don't care about the poor souls who have to work there, the people who turn insane from this treatment will still live in your country and maybe their kids will meet your kids in school and "educate" them on the cruelty of life.
It's best not to push anyone down the mental abyss in the first place. And yet, here we (software developers) are, developing new monitoring and automation systems and deciding to delete someone's entire online life (Google account) without any oversight (AI) in the name of "efficiency" (higher profits for shareholders that we never met and never will).
[+] [-] yanderekko|4 years ago|reply
So is the implication here that humans are less faulty, or that there's something intrinsically wrong about an AI making this decision rather than a human?
If the former, then this is an issue that the technology will probably eventually solve. If the latter, well... that doesn't seem very justifiable, to say the least.
If Amazon has leaned too far in the direction of automation without oversight, then we'll see other firms fail to adopt these same practices. But it seems pretty inevitable to me that we'll see many more AI-driven hiring/firing decisions in 10 years or so than fewer. And if some sclerotic regulations try to slow this down, that will likely be unfortunate for consumers.
[+] [-] WalterBright|4 years ago|reply
> WW2 prisoner camps
For starters, those camps would shoot anyone who tried to leave. Not the same thing at all.
[+] [-] goodpoint|4 years ago|reply
Not very different from "not financially viable", "your health insurance have expired", "your credit score does not meet the requirements".
The decision of implementing such rules and methods and use such phrasing is entirely done by humans.
[+] [-] deregulateMed|4 years ago|reply
After 2 years she succeeded.
I admittedly didn't care because I got a higher paying job in a better field, but I'll take AI over office politics.
[+] [-] intricatedetail|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] venkat223|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skrebbel|4 years ago|reply
FWIW I think your comment would've been more powerful without the Godwin.
[+] [-] golergka|4 years ago|reply
Why do people treat working for a company as something different from selling any other services or goods? If there was a law that limited your ability to cancel a gym membership or going to a different supermarket, you would rightfully object — it's not a government's business to get involved in your voluntary business transactions. Why treat a company that hires workers differently?
[+] [-] Tistron|4 years ago|reply
Article 1 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights states "Human dignity is inviolable. It must be respected and protected." I feel like that would be broken were we to allow this behaviour towards workers.
[+] [-] refurb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cutler|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hobli|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] southerntofu|4 years ago|reply
First of which, if your rights are being infringed, then you have to wait for years and years to be able to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, only after all of your national appeals have been depleted. Which, when you know how national governments can destroy you trough legal proceedings (eg. Aaron Swartz, physical/psychological torture by police/prison, etc) is a HUGE problem.
The truth is there's no place for human dignity anywhere in the industrial capitalist civilization, because it's all about profits. Remember the Aquarius? European governments were competing in cruelty, refusing to welcome these refugees. At one point, a french-colonized island (Corsica) proposed to receive them... which the national government denied.
Or take a look at police abuse cases. How many people have to die or lose an eye before we acknowledge the police is a terrorist organization and needs to be treated as such? TRIGGER WARNING: this is just from the gilets jaunes protests, there's a lot more injuries/deaths due to "non-lethal weapons" -> http://lemurjaune.fr/
Lately, the French government has renewed its tradition to persecute anarchists (in the 19th century, anarchism became illegal and the ancestor of Interpol was founded to repress anarchism) and keeps on rounding up more people for "criminal organizations with a terrorist purpose" (association de malfaiteurs à caractère terroriste). This happened in anti-nuclear struggles in Bure as well as for spraypaint in Toulouse (though not with the terrorist label), in anti-GSM struggles in the plateau des Mille-Vaches, but also against activists who are not accused of anything beyond thought crimes (the 8th of december arrestees), one of which is being held in solitary confinement since early december as psychological torture in an attempt to break him down before trial.
No, human rights are never compatible with a Nation State. Because a Nation State is a construct based on violence and exploitation. In my humble opinion, we should burn all States and corporations if we want a tiny chance to live free. But since today is french national day, let's take a minute to remember that this day celebrates July 14th 1789 when armed peasants took the Bastille prison by force and liberating everyone, marking the start of the revolution. Kissing the arse of the french army's défilé is an insult to the french revolution. Admittedly, all of France is an insult to the french revolution and its ideals of freedom, equality and siblinghood. Nique la France! Feu aux prisons!
[+] [-] cyrksoft|4 years ago|reply
Don't kid yourself thinking that the EU is a special place that is somewhat exempt of any of this.
[+] [-] mlindner|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ReptileMan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] MattGaiser|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heurisko|4 years ago|reply
This is in part, because of ideological reasons, but also because other online shops offer a better service than Amazon, and are also reasonably priced.
In particular, I dislike that it seems to me more and more products are sold by third party sellers. I don't mind paying a bit extra from a retailer with a good reputation in my own country. I don't want to have to deal with a seller who is based in the other side of the world.
Recently I made a large order of cycling gear from a specialist shop. I couldn't imagine buying it from Amazon, as I would be concerned some would be counterfeit, or only be available if it came from about 5 different sellers, all dispatching at different times.
[+] [-] whitepaint|4 years ago|reply
Yeah, I agree that workers shouldn't be working so hard that they can't even go to the bathroom.
Would we have a better world if Amazon didn't exist? I personally doubt it. So, it's not Amazon per se, it is the system, isn't?
So, what are the solutions? How do we make it better? How do we minimize the suffering of these people? Or is it actually working pretty well and we should accept that some people will struggle badly no matter what the system is?
[+] [-] ajsnigrutin|4 years ago|reply
Amazon needs workers, workers need jobs. If you increase the number of jobs and decrease the number of unemployed, people can say "no" to shitty jobs. This is currently happening in parts of USA, due to people moving around, some illegals leaving and new standards, where shitty employers are forced to close down, because they cannot get workers, and competent workers moving "up". And getting workers is easy... just offer a better working enviroment for more money than their current workplace is offering, and you've got one.
[+] [-] TFYS|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aviraldg|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gouda-gouda|4 years ago|reply
The company I work at recently had everyone install some advanced monitoring software on every company’s laptop. Being fully remote, this effectively gives root access to someone in my home 8 hours a day. Sure, it’s a “company laptop” and all of that, but something feels extremely invasive about it and I don’t like it one bit.
[+] [-] nickff|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] o8r3oFTZPE|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] menzoic|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] antattack|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kleiba|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hownottowrite|4 years ago|reply
The goal isn’t to mistreat humans or even to provide them with jobs. The goal is to gather data, build models, and replace the human components over time.
[+] [-] 55555|4 years ago|reply
This is... a mistake. What did they mean by this?
[+] [-] hmhhcycbtsc557|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nexus_dave|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Mordisquitos|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rightbyte|4 years ago|reply
Isn't warning people part of that?
[+] [-] lazyjones|4 years ago|reply
But this certainly is an unpopular opinion mostly due to survivor's guilt here.
[+] [-] TFYS|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] readflaggedcomm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] southerntofu|4 years ago|reply
No thanks, i'd rather organize to have this guy killed to restore just a tiny little bit of justice on earth.
You obviously have a very privileged position where you don't NEED TO work for Amazon. Lots of people are in a different position and i hope you appreciate that.
Also, you obviously have no idea about the rich history of communism. Cuba and Venezuela can hardly be described as communist ; i'll refer to Emma Goldman on describing what is or isn't communism beyond the labels: https://infokiosques.net/IMG/pdf/there_is_no_communism_in_ru...
[+] [-] peter_retief|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] qolop|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] galoisgirl|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elevenoh|4 years ago|reply
I do wish it weren't within a more pure/honest & a less broken capitalism (i.e. insider-hegemony) model.
[+] [-] eric4smith|4 years ago|reply
Bezos is far from perfect, but do we really think that that was his primary consideration of building and growing Amazon?
Pretty much every organization that gets large enough tends to rot from the inside and get dystopian, despite the efforts of the founders.
Anyone remember “don’t be evil”? Right.
Maybe, just maybe, he resigned because he couldn’t deal with the dystopian aspects of how Amazon grew.
My point is that it’s not a good idea to put the fact that a huge organization becomes “dystopian” at the feet of its founder.
[+] [-] epakai|4 years ago|reply
In some ways the company has lived on past the CEOs desires to maintain it, but it's also not the same place. It's effectively turned into a way to push overstocked amazon wares. What was a big push to bring temporary employees on full-time 2 years prior has probably been disassembled for Amazon style hiring. After I left a enclosed cage and turnstile was added to the warehouse employee entrance (probably loss prevention, not totally unneeded, but who wants to feel like a prisoner at their job).
[+] [-] contravariant|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fukmbas|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] schwa_wedge|4 years ago|reply
It’s amazing to me how many software engineers claim to be taking a moral stand by refusing to work for defense contractors, yet are willing to write these surveillance and “optimization” (worker squeezing) programs that give more power to employers… which is just as bad if not worse. The US government at least does a mix of good and evil things, whereas profit-motivated employers are clearly out for one side.