From xxxxxx <[email protected]>
Subject Robots Were Supposed to Take Our Jobs. Instead, They’re Making Them Worse.
Date July 25, 2021 12:00 AM
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[Technology doesn’t have to exploit workers, it doesn’t have
to mean robots are coming for all of our jobs. These are not
inevitable outcomes, they are human decisions, and they are almost
always made by people driven by a profit motive.]
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ROBOTS WERE SUPPOSED TO TAKE OUR JOBS. INSTEAD, THEY’RE MAKING THEM
WORSE.  
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Emily Stewart
July 2, 2021
Vox
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_ Technology doesn’t have to exploit workers, it doesn’t have to
mean robots are coming for all of our jobs. These are not inevitable
outcomes, they are human decisions, and they are almost always made by
people driven by a profit motive. _

,

 

The robot revolution is always allegedly just around the corner. In
the utopian vision, technology emancipates human labor from
repetitive, mundane tasks, freeing us to be more productive and take
on more fulfilling work. In the dystopian vision, robots come for
everyone’s jobs, put millions and millions of people out of work,
and throw the economy into chaos.

Such a warning was at the crux
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Andrew Yang’s ill-fated presidential campaign, helping propel his
case for universal basic income that he argued would become necessary
when automation left so many workers out. It’s the argument
many corporate executives make
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there’s a suggestion they might have to raise wages: $15 an hour
will just mean machines taking your order at McDonald’s instead of
people, they say. It’s an effective scare tactic for some workers.

But we often spend so much time talking about the potential for robots
to take our jobs that we fail to look at how they are already changing
them — sometimes for the better, but sometimes not. New technologies
can give corporations tools for monitoring, managing, and motivating
their workforces, sometimes in ways that are harmful. The technology
itself might not be innately nefarious, but it makes it easier for
companies to maintain tight control on workers and squeeze and exploit
them to maximize profits.

“The basic incentives of the system have always been there:
employers wanting to maximize the value they get out of their workers
while minimizing the cost of labor, the incentive to want to control
and monitor and surveil their workers,” said Brian Chen, staff
attorney at the National Employment Law Project (NELP). “And if
technology allows them to do that more cheaply or more efficiently,
well then of course they’re going to use technology to do that.”

Tracking software for remote workers, which saw a bump in sales at
the start of the pandemic
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can follow every second of a person’s workday in front of the
computer. Delivery companies can use motion sensors to track their
drivers’ every move
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measure extra seconds, and ding drivers for falling short
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Automation hasn’t replaced all the workers in warehouses, but
it has made work more intense, even dangerous
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changed how tightly workers are managed. Gig workers can find
themselves at the whims of an app’s black-box algorithm that lets
workers flood the app to compete with each other at a frantic pace
[[link removed]] for pay
so low
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how lucrative any given trip or job is can depend on the tip, leaving
workers reliant on the generosity of an anonymous stranger. Worse, gig
work means they’re doing their jobs without many typical labor
protections.

In these circumstances, the robots aren’t taking jobs, they’re
making jobs worse. Companies are automating away autonomy and putting
profit-maximizing strategies on digital overdrive, turning work into a
space with fewer carrots and more sticks.

A robot boss can do a whole lot more watching

In recent years, Amazon has become the corporate poster child
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automation in the name of efficiency — often at the expense of
workers. There have been countless
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unsustainable conditions and expectations at Amazon’s fulfillment
centers. Its drivers reportedly have to consent
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being watched by artificial intelligence, and warehouse workers who
don’t move fast enough can be fired
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Demands are so high that there have been reports of people urinating
in bottles
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avoid taking a break. The robots aren’t just watching, they’re
also picking up some of the work. Sometimes, it’s for the better,
but in other cases, they may actually be making work more dangerous
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more automation leads to more pressure on workers. One report found
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worker injuries were more prevalent in Amazon warehouses with robots
than warehouses without them.

Amazon is hardly the only company that uses automation to keep tabs on
workers and push them to do more. In 2020, Josh Dzieza at the Verge
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the various ways artificial intelligence, software, and machines are
managing workers at places such as call centers, warehouses, and
software development shops. He described one remote engineer in
Bangladesh who was monitored by a program that took three pictures of
him every 10 minutes to make sure he was at his computer, and a call
center worker who learned to say “sorry” a lot to customers in
order to meet an artificial intelligence-based empathy monitor. A web
of technologies has enabled the management of every minute of the
working day.

“It would have been prohibitively expensive to employ enough
managers to time each worker’s every move to a fraction of a second
or ride along in every truck, but now it takes maybe one,” Dzieza
wrote. “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; a
small group of highly paid workers who design the software that
manages them at the top.”

A 2018 Gartner survey
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that half of large companies were already using some type of
nontraditional techniques to keep an eye on their workers, including
analyzing their communications, gathering biometric data, and
examining how workers are using their workspace. They anticipated that
by 2020, 80 percent of large companies would be using such methods.
Amid the pandemic, the trend picked up pace
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businesses sought more ways to keep tabs on the new waves of workers
working from home.

This has all sorts of implications for workers, who lose privacy and
autonomy when they’re constantly being watched and directed by
technology. Daron Acemoglu, an economist at MIT, warned that they’re
also losing money. “Some of these new digital technologies are not
simply replacing workers or creating new tasks or changing other
aspects of productivity, but they’re actually monitoring people much
more effectively, and that means rents are being shared very
differently because of digital technologies,” he said.

He offered up a hypothetical example of a delivery driver who is asked
to deliver a certain number of packages in a day. Decades ago, the
company might pay the driver more to incentivize them to work a little
faster or harder or put in some extra time. But now, they’re
constantly being monitored so that the company knows exactly what
they’re doing and is looking for ways to save time. Instead of
getting a bonus for hitting certain metrics, they’re dinged for
spending a few seconds too long here or there.

The problem isn’t technology itself, it’s the managers and
corporate structures behind it that look at workers as a cost to be
cut instead of as a resource.

“A lot of this boom of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship where venture
capital made it very easy for companies to create firms didn’t
exactly prioritize the well-being of workers as one of their main
considerations,” said Amy Bix, a historian at Iowa State University
who focuses on technology. “A lot of what goes on in the structure
of these corporations and the development of technology is invisible
to most ordinary people, and it’s easy to take advantage of that.”

The future of Uber isn’t driverless cars, it’s drivers

Uber’s destiny was supposed to be
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In 2016, former CEO Travis Kalanick told Bloomberg
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an autonomous vehicle was “basically existential” for the company.
After a deadly accident with an autonomous Uber vehicle in 2018,
current chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi reiterated that the company
remained “absolutely committed
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to the self-driving cause. But in December 2020 and after investing $1
billion, Uber sold off its self-driving unit
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little over four months later, its main competitor, Lyft, followed
suit
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Uber says it’s still not giving up on autonomous technology
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but the writing on the wall is clear that driverless cars aren’t
core to Uber’s business model, at least in the near future.

“A lot of this boom of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship where venture
capital made it very easy for companies to create firms didn’t
exactly prioritize the well-being of workers as one of their main
considerations,” said Amy Bix, a historian at Iowa State University
who focuses on technology. “A lot of what goes on in the structure
of these corporations and the development of technology is invisible
to most ordinary people, and it’s easy to take advantage of that.”

The future of Uber isn’t driverless cars, it’s drivers

Uber’s destiny was supposed to be
[[link removed]] driverless.

In 2016, former CEO Travis Kalanick told Bloomberg
[[link removed]] making
an autonomous vehicle was “basically existential” for the company.
After a deadly accident with an autonomous Uber vehicle in 2018,
current chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi reiterated that the company
remained “absolutely committed
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to the self-driving cause. But in December 2020 and after investing $1
billion, Uber sold off its self-driving unit
[[link removed]]. A
little over four months later, its main competitor, Lyft, followed
suit
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Uber says it’s still not giving up on autonomous technology
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but the writing on the wall is clear that driverless cars aren’t
core to Uber’s business model, at least in the near future.

“When a new thing like this comes on, there’s huge new consumer
benefits, and then over time they are the market, they have less
competition except one another, probably they’re a cartel at this
point. And then they start doing stuff that’s much nastier,” said
David Autor, an economist at MIT.

One of the gig economy’s main selling points to workers is that it
offers flexibility and the ability to work when they want. It’s
certainly true that an Uber or Lyft driver has much more autonomy on
the job than, say, an Amazon warehouse worker. “People drive with
Lyft because they prefer the freedom and flexibility to work when,
where, and for however long they want,” a Lyft spokesperson said in
a statement to Vox. “They can choose to accept a ride or not, enjoy
unlimited upward earning potential, and can decide to take time off
from driving whenever they want, for however long they want, without
needing to ask a ‘boss’ — all things they can’t do at most
traditional jobs.” The spokesperson also noted that most of its
drivers
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outside of Lyft.

But flexibility doesn’t mean gig companies have no control over
their drivers and delivery people. They use all sorts of tricks and
incentives to try to push workers in certain directions and manage
them, essentially, by algorithm. Uber drivers report
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bothered by the constant surveillance, the lack of transparency from
the company, and the dehumanization of working with the app. The
algorithm doesn’t want to know how your day is, it just wants you to
work as efficiently as possible to maximize its profits.

Carlos Ramos, a former Lyft driver in San Diego, described the feeling
of being manipulated by the app. He noticed the company must have
needed morning drivers because of the incentives structures, but he
also often wondered if he was being “punished” if he didn’t do
something right.

“Sometimes, if you cancel a bunch of rides in a row or if you
don’t take certain rides to certain things, you won’t get any
rides. They’ve shadow turned you off,” he said. The secret
deprioritization of a worker is something many Lyft and Uber drivers
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happens. “You also have no way of knowing what’s going on behind
there. They have this proprietary knowledge, they have this black box
of trade secrets, and those are your secrets you’re telling them,”
said Ramos, now an organizer with Gig Workers Rising.

Companies deny that they secretly shut off drivers. “It is in
Lyft’s best interests for drivers to have as positive an experience
as possible, so we communicate often and work directly with drivers to
help them improve their earnings,” a Lyft spokesperson said. “We
never ‘shadow ban’ drivers, and actively coach them when they are
in danger of being deactivated.”

The future of innovation isn’t inevitable

We often talk about technology and innovation with a language of
inevitability. It’s as though whenever wages go up, companies will
of course replace workers with robots. Now that the country is turned
on to online delivery
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made to seem like the grocery industry is on an unavoidable path to
gig work. After all, that’s what happened with Albertsons
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But that’s not really the case — there’s plenty of human agency
in the technological innovation story.

“Technology of course doesn’t have to exploit workers, it
doesn’t have to mean robots are coming for all of our jobs,” Chen
said. “These are not inevitable outcomes, they are human decisions,
and they are almost always made by people who are driven by a profit
motive that tends to exploit the poor and working class
historically.”

Chase Copridge, a longtime California worker who’s done the gamut of
gig jobs — Instacart, DoorDash, Amazon Flex, Uber, and Lyft — is
one of the people stuck in that position, the victim of corporate
tendencies on technological overdrive. He described seeing delivery
offers that pay as little as $2. He turns those jobs down, knowing
that it’s not economically worth it for him. But there might be
someone else out there who picks it up. “We’re people who
desperately need to make ends meet, who are willing to take the bare
minimum that these companies are giving out to us,” he said.
“People need to understand that these companies thrive off of
exploitation.”

Not all decisions around automation are ones that increase
productivity or improve really anything except corporate profits.
Self-checkout stations may reduce the need for cashiers, but are they
really making the shopping experience faster or better
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Next time you go to the grocery store and inevitably screw up scanning
one of your own items and waiting several minutes for a worker to
appear, you tell me.

Despite technological advancements, productivity growth has been on
the decline in recent years
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the paradox of the last several decades, and especially since 2000,
that we had enormous technological changes as we perceive it but
measured productivity growth is quite weak,” Autor said. “One
reason may be that we’re automating a lot of trivial stuff rather
than important stuff. If you compare antibiotics and indoor plumbing
and electrification and air travel and telecommunications to DoorDash
and smartphones or self-checkout, it may just not be as
consequential.”

Acemoglu said that when firms focus so much on automation and
monitoring technologies, they might not explore other areas that could
be more productive, such as creating new tasks or building out new
industries. “Those are the things that I worry have fallen by the
wayside in the last several years,” he said. “If your employer is
really set on monitoring you really tightly, that biases things
against new tasks because those are things that are not easier to
monitor.”

It matters what you automate, and not all automation is equally
beneficial, not only to workers but also to customers, companies, and
the broader economy.

Grappling with how to handle technological advancements and the ways
they change people’s lives, including at work, is no easy task.
While the robot revolution isn’t taking everyone’s
jobs, automation is taking some of them
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especially in areas such as manufacturing. And it’s just making work
different: A machine may not eliminate a position entirely, but it may
turn a more middle-skill job into a low-skill job, bringing lower pay
with it. Package delivery jobs used to come with a union, benefits,
and stable pay; with the rise of the gig economy, that’s declining.
If and when self-driving trucks arrive, there will still be some
low-quality jobs needed
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robots can’t.

“The issue that we’ve faced in the US economy is that we’ve lost
a lot of middle-skill jobs so people are being pushed down into lower
categories,” Autor said. “Automation historically has tended to
take the most dirty and dangerous and demeaning jobs and hand them
over to machines, and that’s been great. What’s happened in the
last bunch of decades is that automation has affected the middle-skill
jobs and left the hard, interesting, creative jobs and the hands-on
jobs that require a lot of dexterity and flexibility but don’t
require a lot of formal skills.”

But again, none of this is inevitable. Companies are able to leverage
technology to get the most out of workers because workers often
don’t have power to push back, enforce limits, or ask for more.
Unionization has seen steep declines
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recent decades. America’s labor laws and regulations are designed
around full-time work, meaning gig companies don’t have to offer
health insurance or help fund unemployment. But the laws could — and
many would argue should — be modernized.

“The key thing is it’s not just technology, it’s a question of
labor power, both collectively and individually,” Bix said. “There
are a lot of possible outcomes, and in the end, technology is a human
creation. It’s a product of social priorities and what gets
developed and adopted.”

Maybe the robot apocalypse isn’t here yet. Or it is, and many of us
aren’t quite recognizing it, in part because we got some of the
story wrong. The problem isn’t really the robot, it’s what your
boss wants the robot to do.

_Emily Stewart, Senior Reporter, writes about the intersection of
business, politics, and the economy. She is specifically interested in
how people experience the forces of capitalism and money. Prior to
joining Vox, Emily covered politics at The Street, including the rise
of Donald Trump and the stock market’s reaction to politics and
policy. She graduated from Columbia University and resides in
Brooklyn, New York._

_Vox explains the news. We live in a world of too much information and
too little context. Too much noise and too little insight. And so
Vox's journalists candidly shepherd audiences through politics and
policy, business and pop culture, food, science, and everything else
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