Amazon driver quits over AI-powered safety cameras in delivery vehicles

> "Insider reported in February that Amazon was equipping all delivery vehicles with an AI camera system called Driveri, which is manufactured by a company called Netradyne.

> The cameras are always on and scan drivers' body language and the speed of the vehicle, detect if a driver is wearing a seatbelt, and even measure drowsiness.

> The system then uses "automated verbal alerts" to tell drivers if a violation has been detected."

> [...]

> Amazon told Insider in February driver footage was not automatically available to Amazon and that the "live feed" was triggered only after the detection of a safety or policy violation. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story.

Wow this sounds like a dystopian science fiction movie.

It's scary to notice that Amazon PR team gets away with just saying "we promise it's not automatically available, and that we don't abuse it by surveilling 24/7". All this just reminds me of the creation and abuse of Uber's god mode, Snowden's revelations of NSA's secret dragnet surveillance, etc.

Things like this are only appropriate to use when the code for the system is 100% open source. It's anti-democratic when a system of rules that can instantly upload a live feed, which is "triggered after the detection of a safety or policy violation", is not visible to a participant in the system. It's tyrannical and terrifying. Systems like this just end up gaslighting workers and invasively monitoring them. It uploads their private information (it monitors their 'body language' - whatever that means) to a black-box vault, to be used for further exploitation by capital (and fed into the capitalist, racist and sexist Silicon Valley AI monster).

I do wonder what kind of company culture produces decisions like this. Multiple high-level people will have signed-off on this. They'll have sat in meetings reading their six page documents and nodding at eachother. I wonder if, at any point, anyone said no - this is excessive? Or that this is dehumanising? Or is it that when you get past a certain level at Amazon are you already so invested in their worldview that the way that drivers and warehouse workers are treated just seems normal? Or is there some other reason for this?

I find the prospect of a world with more Bezos's and more Amazons and their dehumanising world-view genuinely frightening.

Do the drivers have to work extremely long shifts or do they have to work multiple jobs so that fatigue becomes an issue? In that case the camera system is probably not the right solution ...

Do any of these "tech" companies that employ blue-collar workers treat them well?

We have major class issues.

These also sound like the excuses you come up with to install cameras in every car when you can't say the real reason because of bad PR.

This approach works really well, because you can just accuse people who are against your proposals as being 'against driver safety'.

It's similar to every other move in increasing surveillance in that you can come up with a 'PR-friendly' reason for the surveillance that people find tough to argue against to placate the masses. "Oh, you are wondering why we are spying on everyone... uhh... it's to protect the children! It's to protect the children! And terrorists! We need to stop the terorrists! And the people who are against these proposals? Well they must be people who are pedophile-enablers and terrorist sympathisers!"