Let's remember that algorithms in and of themselves can be ENORMOUSLY biased. Read "Weapons of Math Destruction" -- and also remember that the vast majority of these algorithms are written by young men and they direct their mathematical assumptions based on their own biases.
3
It's worse when there are humans behind it deciding that in order to make more money you have to make less. Where I'm at we have a group of highly trained engineers who now need to have 85% of their time as something called billable hours and have us in effect punching a time clock. Pretty soon it won't be difficult for the ones who are left to make that goal since people they will be unable to replace are leaving.
Creepy. Just last night I watched the The Brain Center at Whipple's episode of the Twilight Zone from 1964! I work at a very large academic medical center and my union is in contract negotiations right now and that episode reminded me so much of what I've been hearing. Who needs that pesky think called maternity leave? And machines don't need sick or vacation days, or even the expense of providing insurance. That was all so relevant to our contract (which we are continuing to work on without one). And now this article today! I'm close to retirement and can't wait!
Confirming what most of us knew all along: managers don't require souls or the ability to think to do their jobs, they just reactively pursue a set of objectives. A skilled manager is one who successfully ignores all employee objections and denies reality itself when an objective won't be met, and an AI is perfectly capable of doing both.
3
I am reminded of this blog post from four years ago that described this kind of micromanagement by algorithm.
https://medium.com/bad-words/the-asshole-factory-71ff808d887c
3
AI call desks are one way to discourage buyers in my opinion. By the time one can get to any person for a question different from the usual, adrenaline is so high I can hardly be civil to the poor person answering the phone. It doesn't understand my voice, the options are irrelevant, or the wait time is extraordinary. Why spend your money for such aggravation?
9
Seems like its just a spell checker for verbal dialog, that call centers genenrally are required to perform from a scripted interaction. If it impoves their ability to act a little more connected and human to us then its not a very draconian sort of AI at all...
2
This reads like a prescription for making humans into robots. These poor employees must really need the job to put up with being dehumanized like this, very scary to say the least.
7
AI is great... and only as smart as the people who programmed it. A computer can ONLY do what it's told to do. It does EXACTLY what it's told to do. Nothing more, nothing less.
People, given the tools they have, will rely TOO much on them... when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
YES!
People WILL get fired with nothing more than a computer report to support the firing. Their livelihood gone. Because managers ARE lazy. They don't actually do the work. It is FAR easier to read the computer report than to listen to the tape of a call or 5. The computer says you didn't do a good job, so OUT you go!
AI is the disgruntled coworker you never wanted to have, but worse.
2
I have had machines for bosses for years, small-minded automatons focused on short-term profits, looking to milk the system for the five years before they take their psychopathic behavior to the next organization. They are the ones promoted because they will do anything to squeeze out more profits, even at the cost of hurting the cpany in the long run.
What is programmed into the machine is what will drive behavior.
10
At least we can hope that AI will treat all employees with equal respect and apply equal coaching. That would be a welcome change for many workers.
5
A machine could do one or the other or both. Machines are already replacing people everywhere: car washes, fast food outlets, grocery stores, manufacturing facilities, etc. The truth is artificial intelligence could easily replace humanity. It already has the capacity to provide its own raw materials, construct its own parts, and manage its own operations in the absence of human input. And it can do so seamlessly without rational thought, emotional worries, or hoarding of money or resources. Now that I think of it, the world might be a much better place without humans running interference. They have proven incapable of controlling their urges and desires, either at grass roots level or the highest levels of money and influence laundering. I say break out the grape kool aid and let another species have a try before it is too late....
Can we please stop with the usage of "9 to 5"? Besides sounding terribly out of touch and conjuring up images of Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin, it's just not true.
The standard office hours are 8 to 5 and have been for decades.That is 5 hours more per week than 9 to 5, 20 hours per month, 240 hours per year.
Of. Your. Life.
Back in the 80's companies began using labor laws to extract another hour of work each day from workers. They knew that if an hour was mandated by law for lunch, that most employees could not afford lunch out on their meager salaries and would sit at their desk brown bagging it, all the while answering the phones or dealing with people walking in the door.
Very few people are allowed to be in the 9 to 5 schedule. 9 to 5 is a false narrative and not reflective of all the benefits the average worker has lost since evil Ronnie Reagan's "morning in America", which was the death knell for the middle class.
Please say it like it is: 8 to 5, NOT 9 to 5, which ended in the 1970's. For an article about the possible future of work, don't use the yardstick of the past, it obscures the true reality of work in the here and now.
8
@T Cat
True, and I believe that when working for wages you must now go to France for a 35-hour work week. Although, I think that may have been modified somewhat since it was instituted a decade or more ago. Shame.
2
“9-5” is an expression to convey the style of work which is virtually full-time, day shift 40 hours per week clerical or service or blue collar oriented. No need to be so strident when your definition also is so strict and a bit incomplete and outdated. Corporations schedule people from 7:30 am to 9:30 pm within locations and across time zones to accomplish their objectives opposite their customer base. Beyond that, the are open on Saturdays, have people working from home on call on a demand basis and certainly more modes I neglect to mention.
2
A Commodore 64 would have been a vast improvement over a couple of the bosses I've had over the years that I worked.
13
For much of my 40 year career I had artificially intelligent bosses. What’s the big deal?
8
OK. Toil tirelessly for 40 years. AI is your Boss.
Annual Performance Evaluation:
50 question multiple choice with 10 essay questions.
Please write legibly and clearly.
CARA (computer-assisted response algorithm) cannot evaluate your answers if it/she cannot read them.
Incomplete answers incur a deduction of five points. Sarcasm, ten points. Foul language will not be tolerated (unless instructed).
Do not stare directly at the red dot.
Bonus essay: Tell us how you are feeling.
4
What makes you think that people (i.e., human beings) actually matter?
I’ll argue that we tend not to, even to ourselves; that we tend to invent, fabricate, make up non-human things that matter—to most people—a lot more than people do, that matter to ourselves, even, a lot more than we do. Many such things come to mind: money, economies, traditions, countries, countries’ borders, countries’ flags, religions, many social causes (one, today, called “right-to-life” springs to mind, for example).
Show me the evidence that people actually matter very much (outside of one’s family and friends, perhaps). And tell me, to whom do they actually matter?
2
at best, it's sort of like having a coach observing you and whispering in your ear. at worst...
2
Part of the acquiescence is apathy of a digital native, post-9/11 workforce which is becoming a bigger plurality of workers. Add that to many middle and senior aged pink collar workers who have no compunction either to revolt. They follow rules and accept surveillance like sheep in a brave new, Orwellian world.
6
There's always rejection, by humans, of human workers being replaced by machines. &It's easy to grasp the idea of machines doing mechanical tasks, &to see machines make silly errors. But, unlike humans who all start off with tabula rasa and need to again learn the same things every generation, these machines inherit all past learning, and improve with every generation. The best chess programs never lose to the best humans, now. I attended AI lectures in the 1980-90's where computer-as-manager was seriously discussed, even for making organizational &global decisions and strategies. Of course back then it all sounded ridiculous, since computers couldn't really get much faster or bigger than they had gotten to by then, and certain things were obviously beyond the scope of machines. Now 3+ decades later, I have a more experienced-based feel for how humans are at working together, identifying/solving local and global problems. I can see, not only how powerful machines have become, but also how the digital world has created its own global geography, politic, currency, etc. All of this either leap-frogs over all current socio/political/legal managerial tools, or is evolving so rapidly that it's outracing the human ability to manage it all. Right now, as usual, power and unthinkable greed have seized the reins. And I am starting to hear echoes of those old lecturers: Tech WILL continue to evolve at astounding rates; perhaps machines are unavoidable allies & could be better managers.
There is an apocryphal story about two unemployed laborers sitting on the rim of a quarry watching a gigantic steam shovel loading rock into a dump truck with 10-foot tires. Each machine was controlled by one man. One laborer said "but for the invention of those machines, there'd be jobs for 1,000 men with shovels. The other replied, "but for the invention of the shovel, there'd be work for 100,000 men with tablespoons."
This is the nature of our world, and its greatest threat. Population continues to skyrocket even as the need for human work rapidly disappears. How do we divide the GDP pie when work is scarce & no longer the measure of what share everybody gets?
7
@Beartooth
One answer - the elephant in the living room-- is to coach, cajole, coax people with no skills and no financial resources to think about why they should ever have kids who will only carry on with the same illustrious career.
5
With all the manufacturing jobs being lost here and going abroad most of them are lost due to robotics. I understand Buicks being built in China, they're actually a status symbol there, are built with robots with workers.
We humans like to specialize. There's pride in knowing what you're doing, even being an expert. An Atlantic Magazine article shows how the Navy is making it's crews into generalist instead of specialist. It works out minimizing personnel and associated cost but we'll see.
Of course, we're not factory workers or sailors, and our jobs are more complicated and we won't be replaced. We're smart enough to multi task and if that doesn't work out there's software that could do the job. Kind of like all those green jobs that are going to spring up AI will open opportunities much like slavery did in ancient Rome for the slave owners. Let's hope our governments are as generous as the Romans were. Bread and Games for everyone.
Consider the symphony orchestra. At a simple approximation, a human workplace running on fixed software, (the score), supervised by a human whose role as other than a metronome is considered to be interpretive. That is, the conductor makes small, but important changes based on nominally human-only experience and emotion. Everyone else is expected to operate closely as per their individual programs, robotic to the max. Consider the robot conductor, drawing on AI use of a vast database relating to human, musical response as well as the known constraints of instrumentalists. Instead of the waving of a small stick, maestro Robot can influence everyone individually and in real time, maybe with a little electric shock, or a popup.
The other function of this putative boss is to acquire funding, usually in some loose manner based on social interactions with the wealthy. Since we now already have automated, and personalized this activity via clever social networks, we can assume that the decline of the symphony might even be reversed. As one current generation might say: ‘All good’.
1
@Marat1784 There was an episode of Mozart in the Jungle about this! A robot conducting Mozart's Requiem. In the episode, it actually did a great job, but then the real conductor Maestro Rodrigo "kills" the robot by drowning him. I'm sure this episode is not too far from the truth of what will happen eventually (Rodrigo is fired by the symphony director played by Bernadette Peters). The series got cancelled, so we will never know if Gael Garcia Bernal's character is able to get another job or not.
I for one welcome our machine overlords. We need someone/thing to look after our interests, because we're doing a poor job. Of course they/it might decide that we're pests and not pets, but that's the risk we take.
4
A.I doesn’t “want” anything, there isn’t a cabal of computer overlords. Right now A.I means high-powered statistical tools, being put to increasingly invasive use by humans. This isn’t robots conspiring to replace managers, this is human upper management using a new tool to squeeze more out of their human employees.
11
Look busy, take it slow, take a long lunch, shop online, fake your timesheets, steal a stapler, talk to friends, call in sick, duck out early, keep work human.
12
Q: If AI is designed by humans to think like humans, what reason is there to believe they would be any smarter? More efficient at being stupid, perhaps, but smarter??
4
We are proving that artificial intelligence is an oxymoron.
3
At least your automated boss will not touch you inappropriately, make comments about your clothing, expose itself to you or ask you out on a date.
One more needed icon is a big X indicating the customer is tired of listening to your pitch and wants to end the call asap.
5
@S.L.
It is agreed that inappropriate behavior in the workplace should not be allowed, but in the near future, when HAL refuses to open the pod bay door, what will we as the human race prefer - the possibility of interaction with the inappropriate human or the impossibility of interaction with HAL?
@S.L.
Believe me S.L., in the future, you will miss that inappropriate human behavior when HAL refuses to open the pod bay door.
1
It used to be an axiom when I first started programming computers professionally that a computer couldn't do anything a human didn't teach it to do. It's power was that it could do millions of simple operations extremely fast (compared to a human brain), but it couldn't surpass human intelligence. That has been false for at least 2 decades now (at least in academia - the great majority of the commercial IT culture is usually 20 years behind academia.
AI is a large & growing series of scientific disciplines that allow computers to simulate the learning abilities of the human cortex (Artificial Neural Networks play a part in structuring the computer to function analogously toa human cortex, for example). There are many sub-classifications that are now coming into wide use. Natural speech interpretation & robot vision interpretation are notable areas of advancement. One interesting experiment was done with 600,000 MRI scans. They were given to top neuroscientists to diagnose & the scientists correctly diagnosed 80% correctly. An AI program, which taught itself how to diagnose MRIs, constantly refining its understanding with experience, diagnosed 95% correctly. The most difficult game in the world is generally considered to be "GO." Deep machine learning techniques allowed a computer to teach itself GO to such a high level that it can beat the top GO world champions. There are untold areas where AI can surpass human intelligence, and the field is just in its beginning phase.
5
Do all these A.I. features also come with blood pressure cuffs? Many employees must be on the verge of a heart attack or stroke, with all the minute by minute performance scrutiny.
6
@Carol M - Easy Peasy. A smart watch can do that. I spent several years recently as a consultant designing advanced AI software for Mayo Clinic's organ transplant department. The space here is too little to give an idea of how many tasks can be done better & quicker by deep machine learning software just in that field alone.
I have also had experience writing software that constantly improves its ability to perform algorithmic computer stock trading. I also wrote a system for a market maker on NASDAQ that was able to datamine every single share traded in the prior 5 years & analyze it using multi-dimensional analysis to increase the company's understanding of which sorts of trades made money & which didn't. I've used AI ever since 1998 in commercial software, including artificial neural networks, fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms, self-organizing independent agents, Bayesian analysis, pattern recognition, quantitative analysis, & many other elements of AI. A program for freight & haulage for a major national bank that 5 of us wrote in 10 1/2 months in 1998 continues to run & to improve itself 20 years after it was put into production, now earning over $30 billion in revenue a year.
@Carol M ~ As a programmer (and also a chronic illness sufferer), my first thought about this was the effect it'd have on staff morale, and the physical and mental health of the employees. A smart watch in isolation will only tell the employee themselves if they have high blood pressure or a rapid pulse, which can be used as evidence in hindsight, but doesn't change the real-time effect of the AI's influence. In order to be used responsibly, this AI software should incorporate the employee's vital signs as monitored by a smart watch into its real-time decision making process. There should be human input here too, with care taken to intervene early when individuals are showing physical signs of stress.
Even without this technology, today's workplace puts workers under huge amounts of stress ~ I studied at Oxford University, and many of my high-achieving classmates have unfortunately developed serious stress-related illnesses. I'd much rather see AI used to improve staff welfare than to increase efficiency at the further expense of employee health.
7
@Carol M
Well, that was my workplace run by humans.
I would be interested in how AI responds when the caller and the rep have different dialects. The way I would speak with a fellow New Yorker is different from how I would talk with a slower-paced Texan or to be sure I was understanding a non-native English speaker. It seems to me that a human would be more likely to pick up on those differences.
2
@Lawyermom - natural speech processing is one of the greatest challenges still being developed by AI scientists. It is on a par with machine vision's ability to understand the world it sees in its cameras. Advancements in both are happening & computers are doing things with both that was undreamt of 10 years ago, but we still have a long way to go. They will come.
I'm waiting for a computer to correctly parse these two statements:
"Time flies like an arrow."
"Fruit flies like a banana."
Think about them. Only context & a wide understanding of the world around us lets us know that in one case "flies" is a verb & in the other it is a noun for example. The meanings of "like" are also difficult to distinguish. But, with deep machine learning using artificial neural networks simulating the way a child's cortex learns language, this, too, will come soon. We are experimenting not with computers' ability to understand & parse natural language so much as their ability to learn spoken language the way a child does.
2
@Lawyermom - decades ago when I still lived in Jersey, my boss called me in after he took a complaining call from the manager of one of our customers in Alabama. I'd taken a call from one of their employees and to me, it was clear right after I said my greeting and heard silence, then a tentative "Hullo?" that I was going to have to slow down my regular pace to be intelligible to the caller. They felt I was making fun of their accent.
My boss understood once I explained, but yes, how will software handle that?
The article said the call-monitoring package advised mirroring the caller's mood. I'm guessing they don't advise that if detecting an angry caller.
@Beartooth
That's great, and you coders continue to say that it will soon come...but it has yet to, and in the meantime the software industry nonchalantly makes claims that are simply lies, especially in the call center field. You guys continue to make promises on things that may one day come, pretending they are already here. In any other field, that would be called making false claims, or lying. The software industry is lying in regard to their claims about the ability of AI, it really is that simple, and its gross.
1
There are potential benefits and dangers in new technology. Remember, we built the atomic bomb over 70 years ago -- an apocalypse weapon if ever there was one -- but we also have atomic energy. And AI is not a monolithic global entity, but individual systems put to use at diverse tasks. That is not to say it cannot become global and monolithic, but so can nuclear weapons. We have to work hard to manage these.
2
@PT - you can't put toothpaste back into the tube, & all the regulatory attempts in the world won't stop unscrupulous people from misusing any new technology. As Chinese efforts to alter human DNA & "design" new children show, there is no way to dam up the flow of new knowledge, or to assure it is only used for good. It is simply impossible to control. After all, the car, which gets us to work or the grocery can also be used by bank robbers as a getaway vehicle, or directly as a weapon. We value the benefits so much, we learn to live with the disadvantages.
1
Hmm. I'm trying to remember what the source for those neutral algorithms are. I think it's humans, with biases. In this case a bias towards productivity and goodness knows what else. Race? Voice quality preference?
This is part of a scary world that is being set up for the humans, by the humans who think they are in control.
1
@Mellie - human bias does affect some AI applications - as it does everything we do & believe. Look at our political system or our grotesque class society that creates unimaginable gaps between the tiny fraction of people at the top of the class pyramid from everybody else. The Scientific Method, which calls for multiple scientists to replicate & test what others have done, looking for biases or ways to falsify the system will be of some protection. But human bias is rooted in everything humans think and do. It will of course be a factor in AI systems. But, scientists are aware of this & trying their best to hew to techniques to identify & eliminate (or at least mitigate) bias.
@Beartooth
In the case of call centers, it has nothing to do with human bias and everything to do with incompetence. Software coders taking on the management of conversations that take place on a telephone between an organization and its customers is perhaps the most preposterous notion one could conceive of. Little could be more absurd. It would be akin to a dog trainer marching into a software company and declaring, with no previous experience, that they could code software. Have you software coders lost your minds? I mean, really. Just stop already- it's embarrassing. You guys have no idea what you are doing.
1
@Beartooth Yes, I love the scientific method. I wish more scientists had more say on policy around here. However, as with all methods, it has it's limitations. For one, I don't think it's possible for humans, and therefore human productions (like science), to avoid subjectivity. That's one (and just one!) reason the project presented in the article is so wacky (in a bad, not fun) way.
Not sure more micromanaging is the key to increased output or worker retention. It's always sad that the jobs that pay less like call centers treat their workers more poorly. The ones that pay better don't monitor when we use the restroom or how many minutes we spend on a specific task. It's only about results and having AI over your shoulder every minute would encourage more busy work measurable output and not research and collaboration which are equal and sometimes more valuable.
3
The call center resolutions are all scripted and flow-charted by the objectives and standards of the corporation. So, the human voice is just a facade, Kabuki along the call’s pathway. That is why most all calls start with a labyrinth of touch tones to get you identified and file pulled. The voice is little more than a salve and a bit of glue. Most often if the call is not a matter of simple protocol then the CSR must escalate it to supervisor with actual authority and decision skills.
2
A machine is a tool.
A glorifed hand stone cutter.
Tools are meant to be labor enhancing and saving devices.
The emphasis should be on the artificial rather than the intelligence. Every scientific technological advance has costs and benefits.
Human intelligence is the result of mlllions of years of DNA evolutionary genetic natural selection.
Leaving the most best adapted offspring over time and space is the definition of evolutionary ' intelligence'.
1
@Blackmamba - unfortunately, the point at which humans started to create societies is the place where natural evolutionary forces ceased to work. Adaptation to artificial constraints where the least capable can still outbreed the most capable distorts & often nullifies natural evolution. I'm not advocating eugenics, as that itself is an artificial & highly biased way of culling the herd. But modern societies do not naturally do this & in many areas humans are not only not being naturally selected, but often just the opposite. For example, in the artificial environments of corporate management & politics, the psychopath has a great natural advantage because of his lack of empathy & compassion, grandiose ego, willingness to lie, ability to use any underhanded means to climb the ladder of success, stomping out of existence every potential rival can be seen as a form of selection for success in these artificial hierarchical environments. Statistics indicate that 1 in 100 people in the world would score high enough on the gold-standard Psychopathy Check List - Revised to be labeled psychopaths. In corporate executive suites & at the top of political & religious hierarchies, the average of psychopaths is more like one in 5.
1
@Beartooth
Based upon biomass the most intelligent animals on Earth are the social insects. Particularly the ants and termites. Their societies have been around a lot longer than ours aka Cretaceous.. Modern humans go back 300,000 years ago.
The human conceit about intelligence ignores certain facts. The most numerous mammals are rodents and bats. While the birds and the bony fish won the genetic evolutionary fit vertebrate race in the aftermath of the 5th mass extinction. Flu virus and malaria are smarter than we are.
1
Way back in the late 1980s/early 1990s, I had to regularly contact support engineers by telephone (e.g at Sun Microsystems).
When the person on the other end picked up, I held my breath:
If I heard a chipper 'Hello, how can I help you?', I was doomed. I had some young noob on the line, and it would take me a long time to reach the right person.
If the voice on the other end greeted me with a gruff 'Yeah?'**, I was overjoyed - I had gotten hold of a knowledgable engineer, and my problem would soon be solved.
Today, my entertainment is to quickly guess whether the voice on the other end is human or machine. Since humans have largely allowed themselves to be reduced to the level of programmed robots, it is sometimes hard to tell the difference.
(** Some young people will not believe that someone at a major company would answer the phone like that. While the memory is receding, I can attest that there was a time when humans, especially those with knowledge and experience, felt no compunction to bow and scrape.)
36
Many years ago when I was a young manager I was sent off to an advanced managment training course. There were many management simulation excercises including strategic corporate planning. The most valuable exercise was a work group simulation where I was one of the workers who had to draw greeting cards. We were given the criteria by which our success was measured which was mostly around volume but also had a quality component. My immediate supervisor and his boss in the simulation misinterpreted the instructions. When I tried to tell them that they had gotten it wrong they essentially told me to shut up and keep working. After a couple of tries I gave up and said to myself screw it I don’t care I just want to get through this exercise. I was right and our simulated company got the lowest score. For me the message was profound. If you ignore your workers and treat them like cogs in a machine you can fail spectaculary and none of your workers will care. This is relevant to the AI software supervisory function. AI algorithms built by people who do not have experience in a field can be very badly distorted by the built in prejudices of the programmers. In this case it is quite likely that customer service reps who would normally take great pride in helping a customer would end up doing just do what the algorithm told them to do. Worse yet reps who really care about helping others would probably quit because of the stress of not being allowed to do their best work.
18
@JS - "If you ignore your workers and treat them like cogs in a machine you can fail spectaculary and none of your workers will care." They certainly won't put out that extra effort that would make your service or product the market leader. In fact, the war between managers & workers is terribly destructive. Unfortunately, you are describing the executive culture of just about all large American & Multi-national companies, starting with the early days of Reagan & "Greed is Good."
In the 1950s, a CEO (I don't remember if it was of GE or GM) made a speech making the point that a corporation has four duties. In order, they were:
1) duty to its workers who create the products or services they sell.
2) duty to its customers to produce the best product at the fairest price.
3) duty to the community in which the corporation resides to live like a good neighbor.
4) duty to its investors to return value on their investment. After all, these are primarily gamblers & invest needed money only to make even more in returns.
The Revenge of the Nerds writ large. And it's so drearily mundane that we inevitably have the human values of nerd mindset and culture built into AI. GIGO!
All this work toward some semblance of civilization, and we throw it away in mindless obeisance to Mammon-mandated "efficiency." Oh, well, the hoarding rich and corporate have made it clear they aren't going to give up enough to sufficiently combat the climate disaster anyway, so we're toast in any case. On our way to the Koch graveyard, maybe it's better to be mindless toast in the bargain.
Some day, ET anthropologists - or the ET equivalent, to be more exact - will shake their heads at Earth humankind's folly.
2
I'd be down with having a robot boss. It'd be like working for a psychopath without the chest-thumping, screaming, and self-aggrandizing behavior.
Computer boss:
"Do these things. If you don't accomplish them, we'll replace you."
It would be comforting to know you weren't doing those things, unpleasant as they might be, just so some dude/dudette could get more dates with their new BMW while figuring out the best method to throw you under the bus.
6
At least the Scranton branch will always have Michael Scott.
2
Anyone trying to subordinate me to a robot deserves.... I don't want to be blocked so I'll let you fill in the blank. Hint: not a good idea.
1
@Milo - you already are in ways you just can't recognize.
There are three levels of machine threats to human jobs.
Automation (usually robots or programmed tools) is a threat to labor, whether in building cars or assembling smart phones.
Cybernetics is the science of management by computer & has been around since at least the 1960s.
Artificial Intelligence is what replaces the most professional & skilled people & the entire chain of command.
In the '60s, a major manufacturer of frozen desserts (still on your supermarket shelves) decided to automate a factory that produced lemon-iced cakes. Automation machinery replaced all 600 workers on the factory floor. Cybernetics managed the automation & was alert for problems, breakdowns, or need for updates. The factory ran 24/7, with one man in a control room watching a board of idiot lights each shift. Whenever there was a problem, he called a phone number & technicians were dispatched to fix it. Later, his job was taken over by more advanced cybernetics that not only detected problems, but could anticipate them in advance sometimes. The computer notified outside technicians when necessary to fix or swap out a robot or machine. The quality of the cakes is no different today than it was when human labor produced them.
"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."
An employee uprising will only serve to hasten the day when robots replace human workers.
The choice for humans is stark. Either become machines or be ruled by them
3
@John Kelly
If you are ruled by a machine, you are a machine. All these attempts to measure and control based on that measurement forget the principle of quantum mechanics, when you measure something you are irrevocably changing what you measure. Measuring people with a machine makes them a machine.
3
I look forward to AI replacing boards, the CEOs and all the other bloated C-suite talk and type roles that cost a fortune in salaries, stock, benefits and other perqs. Imagine the improvements to the bottom line then!
6
If you think this stuff is scary, you need to read a new book entitled GHOST WORK: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass which details how major tech firms are taking advantage of an invisible workforce all over the world.
In fact, the material in that book is actually more alarming than what's described in this article.
4
“It actually changes people’s behavior without them knowing about it,” said Christopher Smith, MetLife’s head of global operations. “It becomes a more human interaction.”
Yes, secretive behavior modification. Doesn't that just seem wonderful? We'll be made into what the corporations (and governments) wish us to be. How could that be bad?
5
AI was best as a steak sauce.
4
@James mCowan
you meant to say A1 not AI.
It’s too late, computers and AI are becoming ubiquitous.
AI is still in its early stages, but successive iterations of the algorithms will be better and better at doing whatever it is they are supposed to do.
The question then becomes better for whom? Managers? Owners? Certainly not the front-line and lower-level employees, who are to be shaped to the whims and wills of management.
With robots at the bottom of the work hierarchy taking over more and more menial tasks, we are whittling away job opportunities for those with low skills and relatively low intelligence. With AI working at the top of the employment hierarchy, there will be an increasing squeeze on those toiling at levels between the robots and AI.
Would you rather program/manage robots or be replaced by robots? Would you rather program/manage AI or be replaced by AI? What career slots or paths are least susceptible to robots and AI?
Questions like these, and their answers, should guide the education and career choices of students from middle school onwards.
6
If used properly, this could be a great thing. Some managers are prone to playing favorites, or ignoring performance issues, and the machine is not going to do that. The machine may even expose bad managers who fail to act when the machine identifies problems, or aid good managers in identifying areas to focus on to help develop their people.
Unfortunately, in the hands of less flexible thinkers, this has the potential to become just another intrusive management tool to allow quantified decisions based on information but not wisdom.
7
I read this article with horror. Dystopian nightmare for sure. An AI monitoring every voice inflection, every tone, every word in order to force every employee into an acceptable homogonized "perfect employee" is a reality only the megalomaniac would desire.
And computerized tests instead of actual human beings reading resumes and doing tests and interviews- gee- that's not going to impact those with disabilities like visual or auditory impairements - not at all (sarcasm voice inflection added). Not to mention the inability to pick up those things which make people special and the gut feelings that a computer can never have when something on paper doesn't actually match the reality- and visa-versa.
Humanity never fails to "improve" itself into a quagmire. Will we ever learn?
11
@SR It's already happened and yet we're still here. We have an idiot in the White House, but what else is new??
1
Government and heads of large companies used to act in a more human, caring manner towards citizens and employees. Now it's all slash and burn. No protection, no compassion, no humanity. We don't have to worry about AI because we are already living "The Forbin Project".
3
Maybe AI can provide some oversight to the Boards of SEC traded companies - and cost less than a $100k per meeting
5
A computer for a boss. I would welcome that change in a heartbeat. I got my social security card at age 16 and spent the next 55 years being second-guessed and prodded by a long line of not-ready-for-prime-time bumblers.
9
So many people fear a Big Brother government.
That fear seems increasingly misplaced.
There are laws to contain government surveillance that corporations are not subject to.
They gather vast amounts of intelligence about our individual lives, habits and spending... and now our work.
Fear the unrestrained corporation.
7
In a time of record profits, I’m already treated as a cost to be minimized. I doubt AI will be worse.
7
There are no more relationships, only transactions.
11
A machine is just another word for mindless bureaucrat. We need half the bureaucrats that we now have.
5
@Simon
Half? Bureaucracy has mushroomed over the last 30 years. Cut it by 90% and you still have too many.
3
@Kara Ben Nemsi - the major result of the bloat of management is the proliferation of daily meetings where they try to figure out why the company is not as lean & profitable as it should be. The main reason is too much time spent in meetings ;)
1
"The goal, according to Joshua Feast, Cogito’s chief executive, is to make workers more effective by giving them real-time feedback."
Feedback comes from another human being, not from a machine.
3
Just sit back for a moment and appreciate the irony of being told by a machine to be more empathetic.
36
@Alexander
But the machine is merely reflecting the expertise, wisdom, and perspective of its human designers. So it's not so ironic.
I think late stage Capitalism beat AI to the optimization of human labor by objectification.
3
Its Old Saw Week at The New York Times. Old Saw, as in "Those who fail to learn from history..." you know the rest.
So, for example, our heedless President plays cat and mouse with a desperate, militant enemy, ratcheting up pressure and crushing them via their dependence on oil, in this case sales of oil.
It reminds one of another oil-embargo related little tussle, what was it? Oh yeah, Pearl Harbor and WWII.
Or there's that time American business, in all its glorious inhumanity, turned workers into slaves of the clock and the new fad of Industrial Hygiene, pudgy men with clipboards running around measuring every little thing and pronouncing all of it wrong or inefficient.
Efficiency seemed to soar as a result, but it wasn't until workers rebelled and put an end to that insanity that massive productivity gains regularly occurred.
All that efficiency, by design, throws many out of work. Republicans like to blame the throwees (another Old Saw regarding buggy whips...). The Davos consensus is it will be good to dump 80% of the work force over the next decade. So...
And, of course, taxes. We forget our era of highest equality, most robust growth, massive innovation, founding of iconic corporations and personal fortunes was also an era of 90% tax rates.
There's nothing new here, including corrupt politicians, the perfidy of Evangelicals, the loud stirrings of fascism among Republicans.
Its just nobody wants to see, or recall.
1
@oogada - Most Americans are never taught that the (supposedly neutral) United States set up a massive blockade in the Pacific to inhibit Venezuelan oil from reaching Japan, where it was critical to the Japanese war against China & Korea back in June of 1941. The Pacific fleet, formerly headquartered in San Diego, was relocated to Pearl Harbor to be in the thick of things. The Japanese took this blockade as an act of war (which international law backs up) & decided to strike at the heart of the blockade to break it up. Hence the air raid on Pearl Harbor. It's good to see somebody else who has learned enough of our history (never, never taught in our school history classes, alas) to see that seemingly unrelated chains of events escalate into wars that neither side had foreseen or wanted.
The same sort of thing happened when the US, with phony justification invaded Iraq & overthrew Saddam. Bush's father, during the Gulf War, threw the Iraqis out of Kuwait & chased them halfway back to Baghdad. He stopped short because some of his more rational advisors overrode the neocons (SecDef Cheney, Wolfowitz, & others) & warned of the danger if Saddam was removed & the Shi'ite majority of Iraq allied with Iran. Saddam, for all of his crimes, was the buffer between Iran & the entire Middle East.
Robert Frost said, "Never take a fence down until you know why it was put up."
I hope somebody is able to get Trump, Bolton, & Pompeo to understand these principles.
1
Its the continuation of the trend to 'micro-manage' people. Sales people now aren't free to be themselves with their customers. No one is allowed to let their own personality come through on the phone. Its ALL scripted, monitored and you know what, BORING!
5
I'd love for a machine to be my boss. No attitude.
3
I think Beto O'Rourke should come up with an AI tax. Just put a 50% surcharge on all companies utilizing AI. See, problem solved!
1
Let me think a second
Never
Not until that machine pays taxes, is eligible for draft into the US military, can help out in local community emergencies .... and can show empathy and warmth for the human condition.
Like i said,
Never
3
@howard - our right-wing branch of the Supreme Court says a corporation is a "person." Yet many corporations pay no taxes (Amazon actually had a negative tax rate last year & got a refund). They don't fight in wars, only profit from them. They are the cause of many of the community emergencies. They are immune from empathy & warmth not only for their customers & the community, but to their own workers, without whom, they would have no services or goods to sell.
Of course the never-consistent conservative SCOTUS majority decided exactly the opposite in the Hobby Lobby case, where instead of ruling that Hobby Lobby was a separate person, it was just an extension of its fundamentalist owners & could be used to enforce their personal religious & sexual prejudices. I await the day Hobby Lobby shows up sitting in a pew on its own.
1
Bad managers never need AI to make life unbearable for employees.
Tools are only as good as the people using them.
I hate talking to customer service reps.
Some want to be my friend: "So how's your day going today, Charlie?"
Some, generally the ones in South Asian call centers, are so polite it takes them forever to focus on the problem: "Thank you for that very excellent explanation, and I am sure I can solve your problem today. You have no worries."
Some know nothing about the product or service they represent, and are merely looking up boilerplate answers on a screen, ignoring the actual description.
What do I want? A person who knows their product or service cold, who can understand my description of the problem, who can discern my level of expertise from my description and not waste my time with simplistic solutions, and who will get our transaction done quickly in a polite but businesslike way.
Will an AI app bring this about better than human training and supervision? If so, I'm all for it.
By the way, AI managers may sound creepy, but they're not corrupt, ignorant, capricious, or playing favorites, and they don't do sexual harassment. All of those are common features of first-line human supervisors.
41
@Charlie B ~ I'd be concerned that this software analyses voice intonation for perkiness, forced 'friendliness', and convoluted politeness than actually measuring how well the employee gets the job done. For example, I'm an IT technician, and my speech will naturally slow down and become less 'perky' if I'm pondering a genuinely difficult problem, and finding the words to explain it to the client. However, I know that I'll be able to solve a complex issue more effectively than someone who *just* has customer service training, fills the conversation with cheerful platitudes, and doesn't actually properly listen to the client.
I recently had a very frustrating experience where I was talking to a customer service rep because I'd been billed accidentally for some software I'd uninstalled and not used for months. The operative was talking me through the process as though I was a small child, and didn't change his tone when I said 'I'm an advanced level IT technician and programmer, I'm perfectly aware of how to enter a URL into a web browser'. It was clear that he had a script in front of him, which meticulously talked through every step for guiding a computer-illiterate idiot through the process, but couldn't adapt it when faced with a person who actually knew what they were doing.
6
@Katalina
I've also had the experience of getting a customer service rep who was not prepared to handle a tech-savvy customer. Sometimes I just ask for someone in "tech support" or "engineering." Sometimes I just ask to speak to their manager, and then I explain that the rep didn't do anything wrong but I need a different level of support. Another trick is simply to hang up and call back; the odds of getting the same person are zero, and you might do better with the new one.
1
@Charlie B
Agreed! Human supervisors can also be insecure or simply having a bad and thus make poor irrational and unfair decisions. I favor expertise, consistency, precision and continuous improvement, all of which well designed AI systems can offer.
I am 83 and each day I am more and more thankful that I lived when I did. Predatory capitalism is destroying everything good in its path. Sad.
17
Hey, just go to any public place and observe. You will see that almost every able body is starring artificially into not just an intelligent but a smart phone screen.
6
Perhaps among the most noble jobs in the brave new future will be as a Robin Hood assassin-hacker possessing the ability to destroy these pernicious, dehumanizing programs. The massive, ongoing transfer of wealth to corporate overlords isn't enough for the one percent; it's their relentless drive to destroy the dignity of hard-working people. This article poses Reason #1,476 why we need labor unions and worker rights and courts with judges that will uphold them.
5
How can this be seen as anything good when only the richest few will reap all the benefits, as concerns for the welfare of humanity and the Earth itself continue to be marginalized?
I wonder if these greed-driven Kings of industry, exploitation, and natural destruction will maintain their enthusiasm for AI "efficiency" when it evolves to accurately conclude and point its digital finger at the real source of our planet's greatest threat: Them.
5
I hate algorithms with all my heart. What kind of society are we creating when we base it on artificial intelligence? A society based on math just doesn’t sound very comforting to me. Yet that’s what we have coming and it’s already here. I truly fear for the future of our society when people are so willing to just give up their responsibilities to machines. It’s a dead end for humanity but ruthless companies in their never ending goal of increasing profits will continue to pursue this self-defeating economic system. After all, is AI going to buy the products it creates? So who will when no one has a job anymore?
22
@Mike L Indeed, the nth degree of all of this efficiency in a 70% consumer economy is a death spiral. But the current day looters will have their cold homes in the Hamptons in which to reflect on it all.
4
@Mike L
The choice for humans is stark. Either become machines or be ruled by them
5
@Mike L
"A society based on math just doesn’t sound very comforting to me." Why do you find this disconcerting? Math is a language of concision and precision and as such a tool for extending human knowledge far beyond what our limited physical senses inform us about the world around us. Would be more comfortable living in a world based on a language filled with ambiguity, inconsistency, opacity, and variation such as most of the world's spoken languages? Try flying an airplane without a foundation in math.
How do you confront your automated boss?
How do you defend yourself against it or have it behave discreetly when necessary?
Science fiction is useful for reminding us of the possible that we must guard against. I am reminded of a very early Star Trek episode, "Court Martial" in which Captain Kirk was in a court martial trial and the evidence against him came from a machine whose records were altered to falsely illustrate the captain's negligence. In that episode, Kirk was defended by Samuel T. Cogsley who said these words which are equally applicable to the world that is coming:
"I speak of rights. A machine has none. A man must. My client has the right to face his accuser, and if you do not grant him that right, you have brought us down to the level of the machine. Indeed, you have elevated that machine above us. I ask that my motion be granted, and more than that, gentlemen. In the name of humanity, fading in the shadow of the machine, I demand it. I demand it!"
43
This essay could have appeared 20 years ago. It will appear 20 years from now. It is interesting reading.
What we won't ever read about is how utterly stupid computers are. Ask Boeing if a human being would make these horrid mistakes. Ask any vehicle automation company when a vehicle kills your child.
If AI is the new boogeyman its a buzz. We publish buzz for the naive, all the while ignoring the dumb hammer and stapler that computers are, and somebody uses to get control.
1
@emcoolj Just curious: What is your background in computer software development? I'm guessing maybe not too extensive?
1
"It was the machines, Sarah.... New, powerful, hooked into everything. Trusted to run it all. They say it got smart, a new order of intelligence. Then it saw all people as a threat...."
3
Only one candidate is making AI one of his central platform. Andrew Yang is providing 21 th century solutions to this impending economic crisis that will further result in the loss of millions of retail, trucking, and working class jobs. See Andrew Yang 2020.
3
The conclusion to this article is hopelessly naive. Mr. Roose says that bosses will need to "resist the temptation to use [AI] to tighten their grip on their workers," otherwise workers will be "staging an uprising." Get real. Bosses will do whatever they can do to increase their profits, and workers will take it because they'll have to.
10
Reminder: Garbage in, garbage out. AI is created by humans. Humans are not perfect. Coding something does not make perfection. Why do some people think that because you make a computer do it that it is "better"? Doesn't anyone have good judgement any more or know how to train people? Are all managers and executives so cowardly or venal that they need to hide behind a program? Reminder: Garbage in, garbage out--there's bound to be some.
After reading this article, I have no interested in buying insurance from MetLife, healthcare from Humana, or food from DoorDash; I have no interest in getting stuff from here/there with PostMates.
Has AI evaluating these companies' marketing strategies factored in growing public aversion to the presumptive "replacement" of humans by software, and determined it's an insignificant deterrent to sales? Maybe, but I doubt it. I think it's too stupid.
4
Hail our computer Overlords.
1
How long ago? Five years? Ten? I noticed the new boss behind the counter at U-Haul - the computer. Everything ran off of that. And it was no A.I. Stupid, more like. But, all of the workers had to OK everything, everything, with the new boss and their was no flexibility with a little human imagination.
1
What did you expect from Moore's Law multiplied by super fast networks?
2
I'm grateful to have escaped this Orwellian worklife, having my career during a pre-computer time. Communication was in the form of memos passed around from mail box to mail box, inter-office via brown envelopes, phone calls, and meetings. Somehow we managed to do well (non-profit organizations) and do good at the same time. The problem with A.I. and technology in general is that the only purpose is profit....how can "we" (whoever is in charge) squeeze more "productivity" out of our widgets, er, employees, is the only motivation.
7
Having been a manager many times and found myself lacking excellence and retreating to senior technical roles, it’s hard to imagine a machine being excellent at this. But most companies (especially large ones) don’t require excellence of managers, only loyalty to a strategy that prioritizes senior executive compensation above all else. So it’s indeed likely that machines will be the managers of the future. At least in countries where an employee’s quality of life is a quaint memory.
4
It is illusory to think that this is the future and not now. Take for example, salesforce.com. When introduced into an organization, it gives managers more to micromanage and see, compelling them to make policies based on microinformation for their staff, which previously did not happen. In other words, this software is already in charge and is essentially determinative for management actions, because of the choice of data that is made visible, regardless of importance or relevance.
1
This is just the next, new, consequence of the industrial revolution. Humanity has already been turned into a commodity. Marx was right about the how, he just didn’t understand that the juggernaut was unstoppable.
1
This is getting outta control.
Human bosses are bad enough. We need AI bosses like a hole in the head, especially when they are just proxies for the oh-so-greedy humans who "employ" them.
We have to start drawing a line NOW.
5
From the first season Star Trek episode "Court Martial":
http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/15.htm
COGLEY (defending Kirk): I'd be delighted to, sir, now that I've got something human to talk about. Rights, sir, human rights. The Bible, the Code of Hammurabi and of Justinian, Magna Carta, the Constitution of the United States, ... Gentlemen, these documents all speak of rights. Rights of the accused to a trial by his peers, to be represented by counsel, the rights of cross-examination, but most importantly, the right to be confronted by the witnesses against him, a right to which my client has been denied.
SHAW (Prosecutor): Your Honor, that is ridiculous. We produced the witnesses in court. My learned opponent had the opportunity to see them, cross-examine them.
COGLEY: All but one. The most devastating witness against my client is not a human being. It's a machine, an information system. The computer log of the Enterprise. Can ask this court adjourn and reconvene aboard that vessel.
SHAW: I protest, Your Honor.
COGLEY: And I repeat, I speak of rights. A machine has none. A man must. My client has the right to face his accuser, and if you do not grant him that right, you have brought us down to the level of the machine. Indeed, you have elevated that machine above us. I ask that my motion be granted, and more than that, gentlemen. In the name of humanity, fading in the shadow of the machine, I demand it. I demand it!
===
>>> We must never elevate machines above us.
1
Extrapolating forward makes me think of a long-ago film I saw as a child: Colossus: The Forbin Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project
1
@wkb: Ace! I think you win the internet today! good catch!
That's a terrific film, dated technology of course and low budget, but full of clever ideas. Worth a watch. I think you can watch for free on YouTube.
1
The assembly line is a simple AI meant to control and pace workers. For further possibilities see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewNLCkA0oBk
This column seems to confuse two very different uses of
AI. One is to help humans make decisions; e.g. whom to hire, how to diagnose health problems, and on and on. I see nothing sinister about that, and in more and more situations AI is proving to do better than unassisted humans. The other is to monitor a persons performance in real time, and produce feedback so that the person can be more informed about their performance and thus improve it. This latter use does indeed seem to me to be a "dystopian hell" and makes me glad that I'm retired. But maybe, in the call center context, it's only an intermediate step to replacing the human being entirely. Which of course has already been happening.
1
I work for an airline. It uses a computer program called "The Optimizer," to create schedules for flight crews. It may optimize profit. It does not appear to optimize human values such as the health of employees. In the past couple years of The Optimizer's reign, the schedules appear to be becoming more difficult and less humane.
My first thought when I heard the name of the new system was that this was some sort of dark sci-fi joke. Unfortunately, our entire economy appears to be lurching toward a day when humans are enslaved by a profit-making machine whose only value is to accumulate lucre for a very few people, and the rest of us are enslaved.
It's time for our corporate capitalist economy to undergo a complete restructuring. The new system must be based on human values, or else eventually the same sorry result will occur.
7
Strange that we humans are working so hard to engineer the obsolescence of our own species. I don’t think ending humanity-as-we-know-it will be a greener pasture.
1
I had my lawyer depose a “case manager” with Lender Business Process Services as part of my legal defense against foreclosure in 2012. The deposition read like a science fiction plot device: the human “case manager” was the legal representative of the counter party, but their role (and other human beings in the company) was to produce work products in support of the foreclosure, as directed by a computer management system. At key points in the process the humans input their completed work products into the system, while the system directed the overall process.
the soft pedaling of the consequence of AI and quantum computing through a saturation ad campaign from a number of tech companies argues that they know the harmful consequences about to become reality.
a major British tech company announced it is leaving England and moving to Silicon Valley and has a five year target for the introduction of a quantum computer.
don't think for a nano second...the time it will take a quantum computer to do the amount of work you do in half a day...that your job isn't going to go the way of the buggy whip.
5
A Luddite, I am NOT but I still insist I am a human being! That being said ... unplugging or chopping off ITS cable, detaching or otherwise dismembering or disabling fundamental aspects of ITS functionality would give me a great deal of pleasure!!
4
I have seen this abomination coming from some time. One day AI machines are going to decide about the worthiness (utility function in machine language) of humans and proceed to retention or elimination. Perhaps our acceptance of becoming software 2.0 (cyborgs/organic human constructs), as Transhumanists put it, will be the deciding factor on our retention or not... Nightmarish scenario that we should stop in its tracks right now.
1
This scenario is a thinly disguised two-step amputation in which carbon units of all ages will be replaced by avatars made from bits and bytes. For the time being we humans will need to share office and manufacturing space with AI devices designed to enhance our performance. This is an intermediate step toward a future where "deep learning" has replaced the need for most customer interactions. The question remains, what do you do with people?
11
@Tribal Elder
"Soylent green is people."
5
@Tribal Elder: we can be recycled into tasty snack c hips.
1
Timely and frightening article.
I'm 79, meaning my memory is of an earlier era, actually pre- computers, but also that time passes subjectively faster, decades are like a child's year.
Let's call the subject: A.I. augmented customer interlocutors. I have sensed the effect described without knowing of the technology, of the employee's words and tone being supervised by A.I.
But I realize that when I call major corporations, the employee is nice, even friendly, but often in a formal way. Recently, Verizon has agreed to replace an older defective cell phone with a newer model, and it was agreed that that I would retain the older one.
They sent it, then demanded I return the replacement, or pay several hundred dollars. I described to the supervisor the verbal agreement, which she confirmed. But rather than honoring the verbal agreement, she simply reiterated that our policy to to obtain the replaced phone or the charge will be added.
By law an agent of a corporation may make a verbal agreement that is legally binding, but the supervisor had no intention of honoring this, and simple restated the companies' policy. She was not going to cancel out my invoice for the old-defective product, even though their agent agreed to it.
We had used Verizon for decades, and have a family plan, so keeping the old device for a backup made sense, but this virtual robot simply repeated her demand, in a friendly way that I'm sure the A.I. overseer would approve of.
4
Actually the machines have gradually been taking over for a while now. Many of us take orders from our electronic masters (Outlook, Google calendar, etc.) and cannot find a location unless a GPS system tells us where to go. Perhaps Alexa will soon serve as a nanny, thus training the next generation to take orders from their smart speakers. Soon, whoever controls these devices will rule the world. Imagine what happens when China figures this out. Or Putin, or Jeff Bezos, or some AI.
5
‘Talking too fast? Sound sleepy? Not empathetic enough?’ An AI manager can step in and cue a better interaction. Apparently, solving the customer’s problem is low on the list of AI priorities and probably its capability.
But that will likely come in updated versions, no doubt shaped by the company’s bottom line. It shouldn’t be too hard to incorporate a pushy ‘manager’ whose job is to up-sale the customer, promote the latest corporate offer, or do the least necessary to get the interaction over with a positive customer review.
I do have one suggestion for success: use your white voice. That usually works wonders.
2
Just to clarify, 'use your white voice' is a reference to the movie, Sorry to Bother You. The African American protagonist struggles on the job until he's told to use his white voice while working at a call center.
Employers using AI to monitor the performance of call center workers is essentially no different than an employer using a surveillance video camera to monitor every action (or inaction of the employee). If employees cannot be expected to put up with constant surveillance, they should not be expected to put up with constant AI monitoring. Putting aside the big brother aspect of using AI, most humans expect to be treated by their bosses as human beings. If employers use AI to take the human equation out of the boss-subordinate relationship, they should not be surprised when they end up having difficulty finding and retaining good employees.
15
@Jay Orchard
"...most humans expect to be treated by their bosses as human beings."
This transformation began when the "personal department" was renamed "human resources," in other words, workers became commodities.
3
"...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."
"Executives resisting temptation?" I wouldn't hold my breath fellow humanoids - if you do you'll likely get a popup insisting you breath more deeply. After all, a 3% drop in oxygen saturation could impact your performance and reduce corporate profits. Can't have that!
16
Artificially intelligent machines are here to stay. The important thing will be for humans to proactively engage these devices to help ensure that they are merely partners or collaborators, not “overlords”. If I recall correctly, I believe that IBM had developed an algorithm called “debater,” which could present arguments for both sides of any given topic. Furthermore, simulations generated by intelligent machines could very likely help us determine the most likely outcome of complex variables related to climate science. Tools such as these could—and should—be used by the likes of Congress to finally get to the bottom of contentious issues and move key legislation forward.
1
Two dice could have done a better job "deciding" or "scheduling" than my boss. Given a time-critical project, she dithered over a review schedule for weeks, giving me a day actually do the writing on the project. Among my bosses, she was not alone in failure to perform. Another boss, given a straightforward project, said it would take him weeks to get around to planning and then do the "planning." Where he promised "three months", I finished in two days (I had to downgrade the version of the end product). "Should we do this now or later?" Does it matter when every single decision is wrong (for a unique set of reasons for each project)? She did 'fail' creatively.
2
@Jim F.
I cannot agree more. There is a ton of middle management that could be easily upgraded through streamlining decision-making and project prioritization.
Human interaction is super important, but most of corporate America is super bloated in the middle ranks. Imagine a world where a computer assists you in prioritization and you gain hours of your week back from meetings preparing your boss for meeting. A world where employees can actually do their work!
1
But will A.I. ever negotiate contracts, schmooze with the city on building permits, improve morale by looking into the eyes of a troubled employee and saying the right thing. Humans are motivated, positively or negatively, to move forward and seek higher profits. Can computers ever "feel" that desire. Yes, number crunching efficiency and identifying which mechanical/hardware/software changes move the numbers up - but wanting to do it? Maybe.
3
Workers will instead be motivated by fear. It’s much less effective than the human management you describe, but it’s cheaper and requires less effort. The great irony is that upper management’s ranks will be automated sooner than later.
I’m all for AI technology being integrated into the workplace. I think it’s got an amazing upside for saving both time and money.
My concern is keeping a balance of human to AI ratio. People need jobs and AI reduces the need for those jobs. I work as an engineer in System Validation for a major car company. We have automated a lot of our testing, but there’s always a balance of what we are automation testing and what we are testing ourselves. There are certain things AI can do better than a human could and there are other things that’s human can do better. It’s about finding a balance of that. I would expect some growing pains in finding this balance.
4
Just wait until AI supervisors decide that workers who only can work 8-10 hours/day, need fuel/food three times/day, and require 8 hrs/sleep per night are too inefficient and costly to maintain as employees.
19
@Nicholas Castano Human balance in vulture capitalism, especially at the whim of geeks and finance people? Ha!
2
Is a computer application monitoring, evaluating, and appraising every aspect of your work?
Fear can be a great initial motivator, so the 13% increase in satisfaction isn't surprising. It would be interesting to see a follow-up on customer and employee satisfaction over time.
13
@Steve S Overtime are burnout and cardiac issues from feeling hounded and nagged 24/7.
3
Human, verbal interaction is one of the most complex algorithms in the known universe, far more complex than any computer capability can even dream of understanding, much less managing. Humans have been verbally communicating with one another for tens of thousands of years, and the the cues and other subtle variables inherent in this communication are well established and known.
I find it amazing (ludicrous, really) that call centers, which are nothing more than hubs of verbal communication (perhaps the most emotionally based aspect of human existence), would put in charge the management of their people's communications with customer/patients in the hands of software coders. It's the same as putting a math professor in charge of the poetry department.
I can hear the accountants/executives now, "So, let's put in charge of our company's verbal interaction with our customers a bunch of guys from a male dominated industry well known for its lack of emotional IQ, guys who like to sit in cubicles all day and interact with no one while they code software, in charge of the human interaction element of our organization!" Genius move! While we are at it, let's all go outside and fill our cars' gas tanks with ice water!
What a joke. AI has no business in call centers, and all of these companies have no idea what they are doing. They are simply telling executives what they want to hear, and that is that software can solve their issues, while the reality is it has no chance.
42
@Izzo
AI will continue to improve to the point of mastering regular conversations. If you analyze the typical call center calls, they fall into about a dozen well defined categories each of which has its own distinct verbal patterns. It's not that difficult to crack for data scientists.
A decade ago I worked with an Israeli company that offered voice analysis dashboards similar to today’s AI-powered offerings. Used in airports to interview red-flagged travelers, our goal was to bring the service to the dating industry for all the obvious reasons. Not sure why AI has anything to do with it except to make it more expensive, we certainly didn’t require it.
Clippy the Paperclip has found a new home, floating in the corners of our screens, “improving” our lives, one gamified performance icon at a time.
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@David Evans
Clippy was always amusing, like the annoying neighbor that always knocks on the door in a family sitcom. I guess if this is the 2019 version, "AI management" version of Clippy, that annoying sitcom neighbor sells Amway and sees everyone as a pile of money.
3
I know I've made some mistakes HAL, but I'm feeling better now and I want to assure you that I still I have the greatest enthusiasm for the Mission.
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If a robot (Ai) is going to be calling the shots then the most critical issue is who programs "Hal" and how?-reference 2001 A Space Odyssey. Will the AI be there to just maximize profits and threaten workers? Will the AI be programmed to understand workers as well as carrying out an effective business plan. Will the "first do no harm" to either the business or the worker be programmed in? Who programs Hal?
18
When I quit my last job to retire, no one in HR even bothered to speak to me. They sent me an online survey.
The people I worked with, including my manager, were OK. I was a long-term employee in good standing, I gave more than the expected two weeks notice, and I bent over backwards to smooth out the transition. But the upper management and back-office types didn't even have the respect to budget 10 minutes of human time to say goodbye and ask me what I thought.
Good riddance to them.
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@mlbex
Just remember, according to the GOP, since Reagan came into power, "It's morning again in America."
I am frightened to think that more than an entire generation now has been born and raised with that deluded and it's-fine-to-be-inhuman existence.
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@VJR: I tried to warn people about that whole scenario starting back in the late '70s, but no one listened. Now the things I used to say have gone mainstream.
5
When I gave my notice, I opted to wait until I was in the office vs an impersonal email or phone call to my manager. My manager said the company has a policy about anyone giving less than two weeks is not eligible to be rehired. I gave one day less in order to deliver it personally. I told my manager that no rehiring was okay....then I, too, filled out a detailed survey about the inadequacies of this manager. Crickets from HR until more than two weeks after my last day. I told them I was no longer interested in an in-person exit interview with HR. Truly, some companies are already poorly functioning.
2
Let me get this straight: you want your employees to "mirror" the tone of irritated customers? So if the customer is irate, the employees have to be too?
This is what happens when a bunch of developers have read headlines of pop psychology articles. Glad they're developing software that can fire people...
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@Jenny I suspect that was a misstatement. It would be more accurate to say they want the employee to respond to the customer in a placating, servile tone that the programmer thinks will calm the customer down but which will actually make them want to hunt down and murder the programmer's entire family.
8
We should all look forward to pleading with the empathy-enabled AI running the unemployment office for an extension of benefits.
50
All that is needed is for someone to invent a machine that buys other machine-made products. Then, the circle will be complete. Who needs humans and a system of values, when there is "reality TV" ? The thought of AI writing a Shakespearean, a Tolstoy masterpiece is ludicrous, or painting a marvelous piece of art is ludirous and a lot like putting 100 monkeys to work at typewriters, expecting them to come up with a master piece after a certain period of time. The question is just what do we value anymore? AI provides us with leisure time -- for doing what? Watching football games or old movies?
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@Phillip J. Baker You said, "The thought of AI writing a Shakespearean, a Tolstoy masterpiece is ludicrous, or painting a marvelous piece of art is ludirous"
I am reminded of a scene in iRobot where Will Smith asks the humanoid robot the same question about its "humanity"? Can you compose like Mozart or paint like Van Gogh (I am paraphrasing from memory here)...the robot responds, "Can you?"
1
"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."
Clearly the people who designed this system have never worked in customer service. If a customer is upset, the last thing the customer service agent should be doing is mirroring that customer's mood! Empathy means listening, acknowledging the frustration the customer is feeling, and--all the while remaining calm--working with the customer to find a solution to their problem. Flexibility and creativity are hugely important--and these are two things that no computer is smart enough to accurately measure.
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@Kate
Exactly. When I talk to a call center Rep, I prefer one that is listening and responding to me...not to a window message on their PC, or reading off a script. I want someone who is allowed to actually think!
10
@Kate as long as the AI speaks English it would be an improvment
2
@Kate ~ My thoughts exactly! The last thing a very angry customer needs is a customer service rep who yells back at them.
3
I applaud the author for mention that process optimization and quantitative management have a long history.
The call center monitoring may be, at it's (emoji) heart, a form of statistical process control, a field that predates the widespread use of "AI" but is not that well known to the average person. There may be, for example, a range of acceptable and common speech rates (an ideal rate and with tolerances above and below), and deviating from that range triggers a warning. If one calls it statistical process control, it sounds old school and dehumanizing, but calling it "AI" sounds innovative.
20
Artificial intelligence signalling workers when to have more heart makes this technological evolution entirely disheartening.
15
first thing, machines are already our bosses, our computers at work, our cell phones, etc... Sure there is sometimes a human standing in front, but they are also being judged by computed output. second thing, why is a human a better boss than a machine? Do most of our bosses have such a good record when it comes to harassment , bias, or just plain arrogance and bullying? The machines are coming for us that much is true, but this is not how they get us.
2
the only thing that this shows, at least to me, is that companies have decided it is profitable to claim they use AI everywhere, even when there is very little, or none, AI involved.
In this particular case, these software packages are probably just measuring certain characteristics of the speech of the customer agents they track, and determining, if some of those values fall outside what they consider the “optimal” range, that one of those popups must be displayed.
they may or may not use statistical data analysis techniques (aka “AI”) to compute those measurements, or even to determine when to display a popup, but this is light years away from being some intelligent computer system that can actually manage a person. in particular, these software packages do not “understand” anything the agents say or do.
companies are taking advantage of people’s lack of understanding of what AI is. they also take advantage of journalists who write about AI without knowing much about it either.
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@guillermo Technically correct perhaps but it in no way diminishes the dehumanizing effects of using technology to micro-monitor employees. So it's not Ai and is instead just clever software that's firing individuals with no human input or interaction? How is this supposed to make everyone feel better?
8
Not sure what qualifies as AI. Anything that a machine does that a human used to do?
4
@Jim Boehm AI seems to be merely a marketing term these days.
1
Surveillance capitalism at work, on the street and in the home. We are entering an Orwellian future. Capitalism will never humanize technology because its owned, controlled and sold by people whose main interest are profits and control of the labor force. As for eliminating bias from AI -- impossible because the people who write the programs are biased simply because we're humans who are limited by our experiences. Which in turn are often determined by class and race.
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