There was no single breakthrough in automated management, but as with the stopwatch, revolutionary technology can appear mundane until it becomes the foundation for a new way of organizing work. When rate-tracking programs are tied to warehouse scanners or taxi drivers are equipped with GPS apps, it enables management at a scale and level of detail that Taylor could have only dreamed of.<\/strong> It would have been prohibitively expensive to employ enough managers to time each worker\u2019s every move to a fraction of a second or ride along in every truck, but now it takes maybe one. This is why the companies that most aggressively pursue these tactics all take on a similar form: a large pool of poorly paid, easily replaced, often part-time or contract workers at the bottom<\/strong>; a small group of highly paid workers who design the software that manages them at the top.<\/p>\n\u201cThe robot apocalypse is here,\u201d said Joanna Bronowicka, a researcher with the Centre for Internet and Human Rights and a former candidate for European Parliament. \u201cIt\u2019s just that the way we\u2019ve crafted these narratives, and unfortunately people from the left and right and people like Andrew Yang and people in Europe that talk about this topic are contributing to it, they are using a language of the future, which obscures the actual lived reality of people right now<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\nThis isn\u2019t to say that the future of AI shouldn\u2019t worry workers. \u2026 But machine learning is capable of parsing much less structured data, and it\u2019s making new forms of work, from typing at a computer to conversations between people, ready for robot bosses<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n
\nIt\u2019s become conventional wisdom that interpersonal skills like empathy will be one of the roles left to humans once the robots take over, and this is often treated as an optimistic future. But call centers show how it could easily become a dark one: automation increasing the empathy demanded of workers and automated systems used to wring more empathy from them, or at least a machine-readable approximation of it.<\/strong> Angela, the worker struggling with Voci, worried that as AI is used to counteract the effects of dehumanizing work conditions, her work will become more dehumanizing still.<\/p>\n\u201cNobody likes calling a call center,\u201d she said. \u201cThe fact that I can put the human touch in there, and put my own style on it and build a relationship with them and make them feel like they\u2019re cared about is the good part of my job. It\u2019s what gives me meaning,\u201d she said. \u201cBut if you automate everything, you lose the flexibility to have a human connection.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n
On his first day, he was told to download a program called WorkSmart. In a video, Crossover CEO Andy Tryba describes the program as a \u201cFitBit for work.\u201d The modern worker is constantly interacting with cloud apps, he says, and that produces huge quantities of information about how they\u2019re spending their time \u2014 information that\u2019s mostly thrown away. That data should be used to enhance productivity, he says. Citing Cal Newport\u2019s popular book Deep Work,<\/em> about the perils of distraction and multitasking, he says the software will enable workers to reach new levels of intense focus.<\/strong> Tryba displays a series of charts, like a defragmenting hard drive, showing a worker\u2019s day going from scattered distraction to solid blocks of uninterrupted productivity.<\/p>\nWorkSmart did, in fact, transform Rony\u2019s day into solid blocks of productivity because if it ever determined he wasn\u2019t working hard enough, he didn\u2019t get paid. The software tracked his keystrokes, mouse clicks, and the applications he was running, all to rate his productivity. He was also required to give the program access to his webcam. Every 10 minutes, the program would take three photos at random to ensure he was at his desk. If Rony wasn\u2019t there when WorkSmart took a photo, or if it determined his work fell below a certain threshold of productivity, he wouldn\u2019t get paid for that 10-minute interval.<\/strong> Another person who started with Rony refused to give the software webcam access and lost his job.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n
Knowledge work currently languishes in a preindustrial state, Lessin wrote in a letter at the time of the pivot, with employees often sitting idle in offices, their labor unmeasured and inefficient. The hoped-for productivity explosion from AI won\u2019t come from replacing these workers, Lessin wrote, but from using AI to measure and optimize their productivity, just as Frederick Taylor did with factory workers.<\/strong> Except this will be a \u201ccloud factory,\u201d an AI-organized pool of knowledge workers that businesses can tap into whenever they need it, much like renting computing power from Amazon Web Services.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is not the future we were looking for. This why UBI will become a need, as no human would allow another human the job conditions the system seems to be bringing in. If industries are able to produce more efficiently without the costs of workers, their taxes would allow for a universal basic income. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[291,173,153,28,32,26,29,171],"tags":[299,210,297],"class_list":["post-4252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai","category-business-intelligence","category-cloud","category-cosillas-empresariales","category-economia","category-el-critico-como-artista","category-gestion","category-legal","tag-economy","tag-jobs","tag-management"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4252"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4255,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4252\/revisions\/4255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}