Live data from Hacker News

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

businessinsider.com

31–40 of 191 posts

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

#31
post #26

What is the difference between this and having cctv in a factory building? Companies impose more work control over more people. If a company makes good use of it then it becomes a regular practice. If not then employees select another employer. We are lucky that we work in a creative field, most occupancies require just good, repetitive work. There should be a legal framework to destroy archive recordings, liability…

[deleted]

Agree. But this is a different story...

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

#32
post #22

> "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 b…

"Netradyne provides cutting-edge technologies in AI, ML and Edge Computing to help reduce accidents by creating a new safe driving standard for commercial vehicles. Our industry solutions reduce driving incidents and protect against false claims" https://www.netradyne.com/

> "cutting-edge technologies in AI, ML and Edge Computing"

Five bucks says their buzzword-compliant Sauron-o-scope is nothing more than a thin layer over some student's OpenCV project.

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

#33

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 t…

It's the kind of culture that maximizes efficiency over everything without a human being ever actually examining anything. It's the sort of madness that leads to impossible delivery schedules because someone started running during their route and now the system insists everyone must run even if it means you have to piss in a bottle to make up time somewhere. No human will ever examine anything so nothing will ever get fixed.

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

#34
post #26

What is the difference between this and having cctv in a factory building? Companies impose more work control over more people. If a company makes good use of it then it becomes a regular practice. If not then employees select another employer. We are lucky that we work in a creative field, most occupancies require just good, repetitive work. There should be a legal framework to destroy archive recordings, liability…

Because Amazon + cameras + AI + sensationalism = clicks?

To me, the idea of an algorithm which detects when a driver is at increased risk (e.g. drowsy, or not wearing a seatbelt, or maybe using a phone inappropriately) seems like a fundamentally good move. And makes basic sense in any vehicle still piloted by a human.

The issue is that (of course) people being watched by a camera opens the potential of misuse, and so (as ever) people jump to worse-case scenarios and start using emotionally-loaded words like ‘dystopian’.

Of course, we don’t know for sure if it will be misused, and/or dystopian, until it’s actually implemented and we have observed results... but people do like to get upset and sensationalise just about anything that’s a new idea, these days.

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

#35
post #26

What is the difference between this and having cctv in a factory building? Companies impose more work control over more people. If a company makes good use of it then it becomes a regular practice. If not then employees select another employer. We are lucky that we work in a creative field, most occupancies require just good, repetitive work. There should be a legal framework to destroy archive recordings, liability…

Having cctv in a factory is one thing, having one camera pointed to the face of each employee with AI to detect what they're doing is something else.

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

#36

Obligatory dystopian scifi on this theme: https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

Between this latest tripe and Mentor this is more or less the daily reality for amazon drivers. What's worse is the complete lack of any sort of responsibility on the part of eDriving. Even when you can prove that there is clearly a device compatibility issue that's causing them to erroneously flag your device for 'phone distraction' they refuse to acknowledge any culpability. Clearly it must be user error.

Eventually this is going to start costing them jobs and money... and even then they'll just find a way to shift blame. At this point I don't want to buy anything from them anymore. It's just not worth supporting this kind of institutional myopia.

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

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> detect if a driver is wearing a seatbelt, and even measure drowsiness. These actually sound like good things, but they’re also implementable without a camera

Wearing a seatbelt was already monitored via vehicle telemetry, so this is patent nonsense.

Without visual confirmation, the driver could either buckle the seatbelt under themselves (buckle over the empty seat and then sit on it) or have a buckle (yes, just a buckle) to trick the sensor into thinking all is well. I’ve seen taxi drivers do this to avoid having to actually buckle up; I guess it’s uncomfortable to them?

I wonder if wearing a shirt with an image of a seatbelt would be enough to trick the camera or AI :)

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

#38
post #34
post #26

What is the difference between this and having cctv in a factory building? Companies impose more work control over more people. If a company makes good use of it then it becomes a regular practice. If not then employees select another employer. We are lucky that we work in a creative field, most occupancies require just good, repetitive work. There should be a legal framework to destroy archive recordings, liability…

Because Amazon + cameras + AI + sensationalism = clicks? To me, the idea of an algorithm which detects when a driver is at increased risk (e.g. drowsy, or not wearing a seatbelt, or maybe using a phone inappropriately) seems like a fundamentally good move. And makes basic sense in any vehicle still piloted by a human. The issue is that (of course) people being watched by a camera opens the potential of misuse, and so…

So you're going to be perfectly OK with people monitoring your vehicle 24/7 for how much you actually use the public roads, right? Because that won't be abused either. And that, by the way, is a perennial suggestion that got floated again recently. How about setting aside whether this is useful and consider that maybe it's blatantly anti-labor? They can already monitor who's wearing a seatbelt or not with vehicle telemetry. Adding this on top of their existing monitoring apparatus is sociopathic.

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

#39
post #26

What is the difference between this and having cctv in a factory building? Companies impose more work control over more people. If a company makes good use of it then it becomes a regular practice. If not then employees select another employer. We are lucky that we work in a creative field, most occupancies require just good, repetitive work. There should be a legal framework to destroy archive recordings, liability…

Having cctv in a factory is one thing, having one camera pointed to the face of each employee with AI to detect what they're doing is something else.

And what about having cctv on every work station in a factory? This is regularly used in a high cost scenarios for quality assurance/tracking. And it will be used much more when technology is cheaper / easier to deploy.

Is this kind of supervision ok?

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

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wearing a seatbelt was already monitored via vehicle telemetry, so this is patent nonsense.

Without visual confirmation, the driver could either buckle the seatbelt under themselves (buckle over the empty seat and then sit on it) or have a buckle (yes, just a buckle) to trick the sensor into thinking all is well. I’ve seen taxi drivers do this to avoid having to actually buckle up; I guess it’s uncomfortable to them? I wonder if wearing a shirt with an image of a seatbelt would be enough to trick the camera…

Buckling the seatbelt and sitting on it (implying that they're going to just buckle once and never bother with it) is easily detected via vehicle telemetry. They track every time you buckle and unbuckle the belt. Anyone who isn't buckling and unbuckling at the expected rate is flagged. Occasionally this results in the discovery of a faulty sensor which gets replaced, but nine times out of ten it results in the discovery of someone violating company policy and thus incurring an infraction. They don't need a camera for this.
Post reply on HN