Amazon uses AI to monitor union risk in UK warehouses(www.opendemocracy.net)
115 pointsby DeepLogin3 hours ago9 comments
  • advael2 hours ago
    There is no form of surveillance that does more good than harm in the long run. The endless debates about the value of "catching bad guys" or "keeping people on their best behavior" should be rightly seen as opposed to the fundamental notion that human beings are capable of cooperation and altruism at scale. No amount of mass surveillance is justifiable, and there is no version of the future in which we allow it but do not create dystopia
    • 6510an hour ago
      I disagree, I want all of my decision-making government employees monitored and logged 24/7 complete with a peeping tom AI to sort the recordings by suspiciousness and performance with accurate potentially large bonuses on large time delays.
      • hvb237 minutes ago
        And you're willing to subject yourself to such monitoring as well, right?
        • trvz19 minutes ago
          Irrelevant. Public servants are to be held to a higher standard.
          • rabidheuristics5 minutes ago
            Does this include organizations accepting public funds in any way, shape, or form? Where do inalienable rights begin and your fetish for catching people taking too long to shit end?
        • freefaler35 minutes ago
          If he has any power over other people than may be this might be required?
    • exe34an hour ago
      I'm okay with the idea of some asymmetry. You need to pay to look up my stuff, but once you do, I get access to yours for free.
    • Wowfunhappyan hour ago
      > There is no form of surveillance that does more good than harm in the long run.

      ...how far do you take this maxim? Should we have any police on the street to enforce speed limits, since they're surveilling the speed of drivers?

      • advael26 minutes ago
        Often, there are many solutions to a problem, with different externalities and implementation requirements. Speed limit enforcement for sure has some benefits, but also some downsides. Any absolute has edge cases that don't work, but I don't in fact think creating the large networks of people empowered to surveil citizens to enforce speed limits is the only viable means of reducing traffic deaths, a goal which is often better served by creating more viable transportation alternatives to cars. I don't think carceral approaches to problems are always wrong, but they are often an attempt to individuate a problem that's better addressed on the level of infrastructure
      • 35 minutes ago
        undefined
      • hypeatei34 minutes ago
        GP probably meant mass surveillance. I don't think anyone's arguing that a cop with a radar gun watching one piece of road is harmful. It's harmful when it scales to hundreds of data points across different areas, is automated, and has almost no oversight or accountability baked into the system.
      • acedTrex40 minutes ago
        I thought the "automated" part was a clear implication of the statement personally.
  • sdcfgy2 hours ago
    Closed my Amazon (UK) account the other day. Never been happier not to give them money.
    • GolfPopperan hour ago
      I closed mine a while ago specifically because of the anti-union behavior. It's not acceptable and Amazon should meet its end as a corporate entity as a consequence.
    • yipinwongan hour ago
      You sounds like those chinese when I visited china.

      They said, no to american food, stomping on KFC. Recording using iPhone.

      Same thing here, I closed my Amazon account, sharing it on HN run on AWS

      • sdcfgyan hour ago
        Deleting my HN account credentials now. Bye o/
        • ohright27234 minutes ago
          Oh, wait.. you can’t actually do that.
      • pyrale26 minutes ago
        "You criticize society, yet you participate in it."
    • yipinwongan hour ago
      You sounds like those chinese when I visited china.

      They said, no to american food, stomping on KFC. Recording with iPhones.

      Same thing here, Closing an Amazon account, sharing it on HN running on AWS.

      • advaelan hour ago
        Yet you also participate in society, curious
        • yipinwongan hour ago
          focus on my comment, not whataboutism.
          • ohright27229 minutes ago
            It’s a well known meme, look it up. You can be against something yet also be forced to participate in some aspect of that very same thing.

            One example would be me complaining about capitalism and its natural end state while you can, rightly, say “yet you keep buying things”.

      • Symbiote13 minutes ago
        HN doesn't run on AWS.
  • peraan hour ago
    > I am optimistic about the future of AI at Amazon

    It's scary to think that any answer but "Strongly Agree" will very likely flag you as a risk.

    Is this really the society we want?

    • lifeislovingan hour ago
      Its the society ~1k companies want, and if you don't play along you wont have a job or healthcare.

      Capitalism as a practice or an idea needs to be destroyed.

      • PowerElectronix21 minutes ago
        This has nothing to do with capitalism, as these practices antagonise paying customers and quality employees and will lose money to the company in the long run.

        This has all to do with people wanting control over other people, which may me classified under authoritarism, totalitarism and the such.

        • creata6 minutes ago
          > as these practices antagonise paying customers and quality employees and will lose money to the company in the long run

          I've been hearing this for too many years, and so far it hasn't been true.

          Maybe next year some of Amazon's customers will somehow become willing to pay more and get less convenience at other retailers, but I wouldn't bet on it.

  • ck2an hour ago
    I will never understand how corporations are allowed to interfere in any way with unions

    it should be a protected freedom to associate and expression

    why is it allowed to be gameified where if corporations can detect it early they can stop it?

    hands-off people's lives, unions aren't illegal so no interference

  • bediger400030 minutes ago
    Is there enough training data for the monitoring results to be close to accurate?
  • metalman2 hours ago
    right, this something that cant be offshored, and only legalised slavery could optimise there labour costs more, and the robots are not performing quite as well as needed, so a holding action untill they can get a legal frame work to start fining employees for fraternisation with intent. not to worry, it's in the works.
  • hndhyc0bdt2 hours ago
    Did workforce analytics at a big logistics outfit and this stuff is usually sold internally as "attrition risk" or "engagement heatmaps", never as union anything. Same features though, shift churn, grievance counts, break room badge patterns.
    • deadbunny33 minutes ago
      Businesses usually have innocent sounding euphemisms when breaking the law.
  • slopan hour ago
    Government surveillance is much worse than corporate surveillance but European countries are only interested in restricting the latter, and only when it doesn't get involved with preventing the former.

    AmazonUK now requires ID and a selfie for "bladed items": https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/amazon-uk-now-requires-p...

    The UK is ranked as one of the least free countries for digital freedom: https://eylenburg.github.io/countries.htm. Worse than India, Brazil, and Vietnam.

    • ungovernableCatan hour ago
      >Government surveillance is much worse than corporate surveillance

      I think in practice you'll find they go hand in hand together.

      • advael43 minutes ago
        My brother in china once told me "In china, every company of a certain size has board seats filled by a representative of the party, to make sure corporate and government priorities align. In america, every company of a certain size sends lobbyists and sometimes runs candidates directly, to make sure corporate and government priorities align"

        Concentration of power has many instances of convergent evolution, but societies trending dystopian is heavily correlated with concentration of power regardless of the shape it takes

    • slateran hour ago
      You know, when I want to know country rankings of digital freedoms, the very first place i go to is eylenburg.github.io

      What are their sources for their statistics? "Source: eylenburg.github.io"

      Ah.

      • easterncalculusan hour ago
        You can click each box in the matrix and see the source for the acts in question from each country. What kind of quantitative measure are you expecting?