A Machine May Not Take Your Job, but One Could Become Your Boss
THe Neww York Times, 23 juin 2019, Kevin Roose
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/23/technology/artificial-intelligence-ai-workplace.html
The goal of automation has always been efficiency. What if artificial intelligence sees humanity itself as the thing to be optimized?
Cogito is one of several A.I. programs used in call centers and other workplaces. The goal, according to Joshua Feast, Cogito’s chief executive, is to make workers more effective by giving them real-time feedback.
Amazon uses complex algorithms to track worker productivity in its fulfillment centers, and can automatically generate the paperwork to fire workers who don’t meet their targets, as The Verge uncovered this year. (Amazon has disputed that it fires workers without human input, saying that managers can intervene in the process.)
[The Verge’s article : ▻https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/25/18516004/amazon-warehouse-fulfillment-centers-productivity-firing-terminations]
There were no protests at MetLife’s call center. Instead, the employees I spoke with seemed to view their Cogito software as a mild annoyance at worst. Several said they liked getting pop-up notifications during their calls, although some said they had struggled to figure out how to get the “empathy” notification to stop appearing. (Cogito says the A.I. analyzes subtle differences in tone between the worker and the caller and encourages the worker to try to mirror the customer’s mood.)
MetLife, which uses the software with 1,500 of its call center employees, says using the app has increased its customer satisfaction by 13 percent.
ANd TheNewYorker little comment on tech :
Using A.I. to correct for human biases is a good thing. But as more A.I. enters the workplace, executives will have to resist the temptation to use it to tighten their grip on their workers and subject them to constant surveillance and analysis. If that happens, it won’t be the robots staging an uprising.
[emphasis is mine]
On arrête psa le progrès. Nous sommes en 2019 et le vieil adage mortifère continue de sévir allégrement (même dans un article qui se voudrait critique..
