Artificial Human Resources

Gig Companies Using AI To Minimize Worker Compensation

According to research conducted by law professor Veena Dubal, companies who rely on contracting gig work such as Uber and Amazon have allegedly using AI to look over massive troves of worker data and ensure that they minimize payouts to their employees by finding ways to pay people the lowest they can for the same work.

It makes sense, right? They employ thousands upon thousands of contractors (since they've spent so much money keeping the laws loose enough to call them all contractors) and so they can pour over just metric assloads of data and find the cheapest way to get jobs done.

Does Mark seem to always need shifts late in the month? Is it because he needs to afford medication and food? Well, when I look here, it seems that Eloise works fairly consistently, but wont work for as little as Mark. The desperation aspect just isn't there, so let's give the job to Mark, but offer to pay a few bucks less an hour.

Of course, this is all being done by a soulless AI who has been told to simply optimize numbers based on massive sets of input. Humanity be damned, I guess?

But wait, there's more

Why stop at compensation when you can just roll entire HR decision trees into AI? Talkin' about Uber, again.

An Uber driver in the UK received several automated scoldings from the Uber app, threatening to fire him if he doesn't correct his behavior. What was this egregious behavior that merited an automated HR scolding? Taking a detour a few times to avoid closed roads.

When he asked Uber to provide more insight into the decision making behind threatening his livelihood, he got nowhere.

Thanks to collaboration with his union (wow, a union? whats that??), the driver was able to push it to the courts. Of course, right before it went to trial, Uber was like "OOOHHHH, you mean that data?" and finally relented.

All the talk about ChatGPT being this horrifying new step in AI is a great cover for the fact that AI has been directly intervening in our lives for many years already. AI is purpose-built to optimize numbers, and companies love stripping away humanity for the sake of better numbers. A match made in heaven.

Montana Might Ban Tiktok… Somehow…

A bill in Montana is making its way to be signed by the governor which would ban the operation or distribution of TikTok in the state. To be clear: that is literal nonsense.

The bill would fine app stores tens of thousands of dollars for allowing users to download the app at all. TikTok itself would also be barred from "operating within the state" which is not a clearly defined concept in the slightest.

To be clear: this is not another "banned from government devices" ban. This is a "this app is not allowed to exist in this state" thing.

Yay, reactionary excuses to further authoritarian movements! Fun!

Anyway the ACLU is already pushing back and this is almost definitely going to be tied up in courts because of course. But like what the hell, y'all?

lmao google is spooped

Google is kinda spooped right now and is scrambling to cobble together some kind of new relevant search feature or search product entirely, seemingly with an AI-ish twist.

The short version is: Google spoke for like a decade about their efforts and investments into AI, and then ChatGPT came out and wiped the floor with them out of nowhere. Google has since been scrambling to play catch-up, and is now taking their classic shotgun method approach to product development.

Similar to when they didn't quite get a handle on social networking with Google Plus and tried to solve the problem by cramming Google Plus into everything, they are now seemingly trying to cram AI into everything as a stopgap until they can actually roll out an AI-powered search system. Er, more AI-powered. Again, AI has already been a thing.

I dunno about you, but Google search is all around kinda shit these days anyway.

More Dead Kids

Four people are dead and 28 more are wounded after a shooting at a 16-year-old's birthday party in Alabama.

One of the people killed was an 18-year-old high school senior who was the older brother of the girl celebrating her birthday.

There's no motive and it doesn't really matter anyway. There have now been 161 mass shootings in 2023, as major leaders in our country either wrinkle their brows or actively refuse to take any action whatsoever. This is because they truly and honestly do not care about our well-being.

More Stuff

• Someone threw a smoke bomb at the Prime Minister of Japan
• Elon Musk has incorporated an AI company to rival OpenAI after signing an open letter asking to halt AI development
• France's president Macron has signed the pension changes into law, ignoring protestors and unions, which I bet is gonna go super well for him
• The Supreme Court is temporarily pausing the ruling on abortion pill availability as they review if they wanna ban it or not, which is totally a good use of time
• Blackrock's profits are down this quarter but also they manage 9.1 TRILLION dollars in assets, so…
• Fascist-only social network Parler has been purchased and taken offline as the new owner tries to figure out what the hell to do with it
• A large nuclear reactor in Finland is finally at standard operation, helping to stabilize energy supply in the region
• Microsoft is messing around with a potential gaming handheld-specific Windows variant for stuff like the Steam Deck
• Ganondorf will be voice acted by Matt Mercer in Tear of the Kingdom