<story><title>Managed by Bots: surveillance of gig economy workers</title><url>https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/4709/managed-bots-surveillance-gig-economy-workers</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fxtentacle</author><text>That video at the end is interesting both for its content and for its delivery technology.&lt;p&gt;And I do agree with him: If whether you get work or not decides on a black box AI and your only support channel is another black box AI, that is pretty much a Kafka-esque nightmare.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d guess we here on HN are the people best equipped to prevent the worst. So the next time you help someone automate their customer support, ask yourself: How would I feel if my well-being depended on this? Because for some poor soul, it might. Is there a clear fall-back in case the AI fails horrible? Because, you know, they always do.&lt;p&gt;I once had my own support automation problem with Amazon, but luckily I had no stakes in it. They accidentally sent me someone else&amp;#x27;s parcel. So I filed a support request to inform them. They very politely apologized within a minute and informed me that they are sorry about my lost parcel and they&amp;#x27;ll send another one. So I got the same wrong parcel again. After waiting a while, I opened up the two parcels, each roughly 10x5x5 inches (25x10x10 cm) large. It was two single pencil erasers.&lt;p&gt;But boy would I have been furious if I had received the same support quality for a lost high-value parcel... Also, I did ponder if it is OK for Amazon to waste my time if I&amp;#x27;m not even their customer. I mean their support forms are difficult to reach, no matter why you need to contact them.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>&amp;gt; I&amp;#x27;d guess we here on HN are the people best equipped to prevent the worst.&lt;p&gt;I agree that individuals should be conscious of which companies they support through their labor and&amp;#x2F;or spending habits.&lt;p&gt;But I also think that HN overestimates the ability for single engineers to upend the goals of an entire organization. In the real world, if a company wants to automate anything and they’re paying well, there will be a line of engineers out the door applying to get it done.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; So the next time you help someone automate their customer support&lt;p&gt;I think this strikes at a false dichotomy that occurs frequently in these conversations: There’s an idea that if we simply removed the automated solutions then companies would be forced to replace them with the idealized solutions that we want. In practice, companies know very well that automated customer support and similar solutions aren’t comparable to having a well-paid, highly-trained person pick up the phone. But they weren’t going to pay for the expensive solution anyway.&lt;p&gt;And the real driving factor isn’t just the companies, it’s the customers. If given the choice between two identical products where the only difference is automated versus human customer support (and associated higher price for human customer support), the majority of customers will choose the cheaper option every time. There are a few people who will proudly pay more for the better CS, but they are a tiny minority. Overall, customers &lt;i&gt;want&lt;/i&gt; the cheaper option even if it comes with tradeoffs, and they will vote with their wallets.</text></comment>
<story><title>Managed by Bots: surveillance of gig economy workers</title><url>https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/4709/managed-bots-surveillance-gig-economy-workers</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fxtentacle</author><text>That video at the end is interesting both for its content and for its delivery technology.&lt;p&gt;And I do agree with him: If whether you get work or not decides on a black box AI and your only support channel is another black box AI, that is pretty much a Kafka-esque nightmare.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d guess we here on HN are the people best equipped to prevent the worst. So the next time you help someone automate their customer support, ask yourself: How would I feel if my well-being depended on this? Because for some poor soul, it might. Is there a clear fall-back in case the AI fails horrible? Because, you know, they always do.&lt;p&gt;I once had my own support automation problem with Amazon, but luckily I had no stakes in it. They accidentally sent me someone else&amp;#x27;s parcel. So I filed a support request to inform them. They very politely apologized within a minute and informed me that they are sorry about my lost parcel and they&amp;#x27;ll send another one. So I got the same wrong parcel again. After waiting a while, I opened up the two parcels, each roughly 10x5x5 inches (25x10x10 cm) large. It was two single pencil erasers.&lt;p&gt;But boy would I have been furious if I had received the same support quality for a lost high-value parcel... Also, I did ponder if it is OK for Amazon to waste my time if I&amp;#x27;m not even their customer. I mean their support forms are difficult to reach, no matter why you need to contact them.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>raxxorrax</author><text>I firmly state my disapproval to engineers working on such systems. Doesn&amp;#x27;t really work, you always find someone that prostitutes himself.&lt;p&gt;Production surveillance can be essential for quality control, but you don&amp;#x27;t need individual surveillance for that and line managers are better at evaluating people.&lt;p&gt;It is mostly useless managers that want to show of a nice Excel sheet.</text></comment>