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The Machine Fired Me

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Re: The Machine Fired Me

#351

Post by pc86 »

DanBC wrote: post #316
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but then you need special equipment rather than standard cameras (that usually filter IR); which would prove the point that it's about physical limitations rather than racism.

The racism comes from saying "We recognise human faces" and then not recognising a significant proportion of humans.

That's not racism, that's laziness. Or perhaps just being a bad engineer, if you want to be more cynical about it.

It's not that hard to find both conscious and subconscious examples of systemic or individual racism. Engineers taking the easy path with webcam facial recognition is probably not a good one and serves only to give more fuel to those who claim people jump to the racism cry too quickly.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#353

Post by pc86 »

toomuchgov wrote: post #339
dewiz wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s very common with badly designed anomaly detection systems. Customer support say the system has detected something wrong in the customer behavior and ask, often order, to stop or fix whatever they’re doing. Neither customers nor support are able to intervene

GDPR definitely addresses this scenario.

How?

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#354

Post by gcp »

reificator wrote: post #153

Interesting read, but I did want to touch on this paragraph at the end. > PS: I am willing to bet the recent issue with YouTube Piracy filter blocking MIT courses and the Blender Foundation are the result of The Machine being the ultimate decider. Even though YouTube's support team clearly knows that these don't violate terms and conditions, the Machine decided otherwise. And they will have to fight it to death to br…

YouTube is requiring them to switch to monetized

That's just what "The Machine" says and may not be the intended policy, even if it is now the effective one.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#355

Post by ghoul2 »

what I don't get is why a director-level person is willing to stand by and let this happen. Whatever the system says - if I, as manager of someone (and responsible for them) did not fire that someone, nor agree to they being fired by a higher up - I am NOT going to let security escort them out - no matter what.

Is there no sense of responsibility here?

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#356

Post by pluma »

hueving wrote: post #246
wjnc wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It's a theme I run across in many US-worker situations we read about on HN. There is such a lack of basic rights, but also basic norms when relating to workers. Ethical behaviour, from my perspective, would be to compensate the employee, regardsless of his legal rights. In a more worker-central system, the worker should have easy recourse to an official judgement for his money. In the Netherlands there is ev…

None of what you says really applies in this case. According to the article the thing that triggered this was the failure to renew his contract. If it had renewal intervals, that means he wasn't legally entitled to 3 years. This is likely why he wasn't paid for the interim either. The best the company could do would likely be to bump up the future rate or offer a "signing bonus". Being a contractor is not at all like…

Not sure how this works in other jurisdictions in the EU but in Germany a work contract can be silently renewed if both parties act as if it had been renewed even if the contract itself says it has to be renewed explicitly and in writing.

If you keep showing up to work and your superiors keep managing you (and especially if you keep getting paid) the contract remains valid beyond its stated expiry date.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#357

Post by Sean1708 »

sbarzowski wrote: post #34

The really surprising part is that after this incident OP still wanted to work with that company, even though from what I understand they didn't make it up to him in any way.

They went back only until they got another offer, which makes complete sense to me.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#359

Post by Jonnax »

thecatspaw wrote: post #342
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there a problem with shadow contrast which makes features more difficult to pick out on darker skinned faces? I vaguely recall an East Asian developer giving that reason for why he developed on Western data-sets.

Wouldnt it make more sense then to develop _not_ on the easycase but the hard ones?

Yeah but, you know, deadlines to meet and contracts to win.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#360

Post by dagw »

pc86 wrote: post #351
DanBC wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The racism comes from saying "We recognise human faces" and then not recognising a significant proportion of humans.

That's not racism, that's laziness. Or perhaps just being a bad engineer, if you want to be more cynical about it. It's not that hard to find both conscious and subconscious examples of systemic or individual racism. Engineers taking the easy path with webcam facial recognition is probably not a good one and serves only to give more fuel to those who claim people jump to the racism cry too quickly.

That's not racism, that's laziness.

If the system had failed for with people with different hair color rather than skin color would they have been equally lazy?

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