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Amazon uses AI to monitor union risk in UK warehouses

92 points DeepLogin 1 hour ago 21 comments

hndhyc0bdt 58 minutes ago | parent

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.

metalman 51 minutes ago | parent

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.

hollow-moe 51 minutes ago | parent

Healthy work environment https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/makima-is-listening-kishise-n...

advael 49 minutes ago | parent

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

exe34 36 minutes ago | parent

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.

6510 8 minutes ago | parent

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.

Wowfunhappy 5 minutes ago | parent

> 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?

sdcfgy 46 minutes ago | parent

Closed my Amazon (UK) account the other day. Never been happier not to give them money.

GolfPopper 30 minutes ago | parent

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.

yipinwong 8 minutes ago | parent

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

sdcfgy 3 minutes ago | parent

Deleting my HN account credentials now. Bye o/

yipinwong 7 minutes ago | parent

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.

advael 3 minutes ago | parent

Yet you also participate in society, curious

pera 41 minutes ago | parent

> 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?

lifeisloving 22 minutes ago | parent

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.

slop 32 minutes ago | parent

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.

ungovernableCat 24 minutes ago | parent

>Government surveillance is much worse than corporate surveillance

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

slater 23 minutes ago | parent

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.

easterncalculus 14 minutes ago | parent

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?

ck2 7 minutes ago | parent

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