By Steven Greenhouse
Source: The Guardian
As artificial intelligence spreads rapidly across America’s economy, there’s a lively debate about how it will transform the future of work. What many people fail to realize is that AI has already changed millions of workers’ jobs – often for the worse.
At Amazon, some warehouse and delivery drivers complain that AI-driven bots have fired them without any human intervention whatsoever. At some companies, surveillance apps track how much time workers spend in trips to the bathroom, with some workers protesting that the time limits are too strict.
Many corporations gather information about their employees through webcams, keyboards, internet activity and phone logs, and that can include private information about workers’ political opinions, sexual orientation, union activity and even their emotions and mental state. Inside many call centers, AI tools monitor the calls that agents make, and based on factors like the agent’s or customer’s tone of voice, those tools often send messages to an agent’s computer, directing them to talk with more empathy or energy.
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