Live data from Hacker News

Walmart, Delta, and Starbucks are using AI to monitor employee messages

cnbc.com

31–40 of 104 posts

Re: Walmart, Delta, and Starbucks are using AI to monitor employee messages

#31

Do we just call all of statistics "AI" now? I fail to see how or why applying basic machine learning techniques for data analysis is "artificial intelligence". This idea that intellection is nothing more than pattern matching is silly and needs to die. Conceptual understanding entails more than just pattern matching.

The AI part is the sentiment analysis of the chat message text and pictures. They're using statistics on the resulting aggregate data. This seems pretty reasonable to me. ML is roughly a gazillion times better than traditional NLP techniques for sentiment analysis. If you're doing sentiment analysis without ML in 2024 then you need to stop and reevaluate what you're doing.

If you simply wanted to complain that they're using "AI" to describe something that uses ML, please tell me so I can move along. Nothing interesting there to discuss.

Re: Walmart, Delta, and Starbucks are using AI to monitor employee messages

#32

>>>> Using the anonymized data in Aware’s analytics product, clients can see how employees of a certain age group or in a particular geography are responding to a new corporate policy or marketing campaign >>>> “It won’t have names of people, to protect the privacy,” Schumann said. Rather, he said, clients will see that “maybe the workforce over the age of 40 in this part of the United States is seeing the changes to…

When your aim is constant growth, you're going to build your strategy towards what resonated with younger age groups.

Re: Walmart, Delta, and Starbucks are using AI to monitor employee messages

#33

Do we just call all of statistics "AI" now? I fail to see how or why applying basic machine learning techniques for data analysis is "artificial intelligence". This idea that intellection is nothing more than pattern matching is silly and needs to die. Conceptual understanding entails more than just pattern matching.

Do you call all of LLMs “statistics”? I fail to see how anyone who has studied and worked with these systems could fail to see how they exhibit behavior of conceptual understanding.

Re: Walmart, Delta, and Starbucks are using AI to monitor employee messages

#34

Do we just call all of statistics "AI" now? I fail to see how or why applying basic machine learning techniques for data analysis is "artificial intelligence". This idea that intellection is nothing more than pattern matching is silly and needs to die. Conceptual understanding entails more than just pattern matching.

It's a mandatory buzzword for investment in 2024 since everything else has been milked to death already. I've seen companies go back and slap "AI" on things that have been out for 15 years.

Re: Walmart, Delta, and Starbucks are using AI to monitor employee messages

#35

Do we just call all of statistics "AI" now? I fail to see how or why applying basic machine learning techniques for data analysis is "artificial intelligence". This idea that intellection is nothing more than pattern matching is silly and needs to die. Conceptual understanding entails more than just pattern matching.

[deleted]

Re: Walmart, Delta, and Starbucks are using AI to monitor employee messages

#36
post #17

As much as this turns my stomach, this is neither new nor unexpected, and honestly this is fairly benign to many of the things that companies do such as precision location tracking throughout the building, using company-issued phones, and using normal security surveillance to monitor "watercooler" talk and things like that. We had our chance to push back against company surveillance well over a decade ago, and nobody…

5. Make friends with all the sys admins. Thats the simplest way to bypass whatever bullshit corporate robots dream up. Like Jurassic Park they love to believe they control everything thats going on in the park. In reality their control rooms are full of Dennis Nedrys.

Lol. That is a fantasy, just like Jurassic Park.

Re: Walmart, Delta, and Starbucks are using AI to monitor employee messages

#37

Do we just call all of statistics "AI" now? I fail to see how or why applying basic machine learning techniques for data analysis is "artificial intelligence". This idea that intellection is nothing more than pattern matching is silly and needs to die. Conceptual understanding entails more than just pattern matching.

If you want to close your funding round.. yes

Re: Walmart, Delta, and Starbucks are using AI to monitor employee messages

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because sys admins are going to risk their jobs and expose themselves to possible civil claims for damages or even criminal charges by intentionally circumventing company policy for their friends? A few might, I guess. I wouldn't , nor would any that I know. A better 5. is probably lobby your lawmakers for stronger workplace privacy laws.

This has been my experience. Excepting maybe small startups, gone are the days also where a sysadmin could do something and nobody would know. These days things are heavily logged and audited, usually by software. With IaC and peer review, there's no way one person could do something without numerous others knowing.

[deleted]

Re: Walmart, Delta, and Starbucks are using AI to monitor employee messages

#39

As much as this turns my stomach, this is neither new nor unexpected, and honestly this is fairly benign to many of the things that companies do such as precision location tracking throughout the building, using company-issued phones, and using normal security surveillance to monitor "watercooler" talk and things like that. We had our chance to push back against company surveillance well over a decade ago, and nobody…

I'll add one. (Not just talking about the immediate employee surveillance tech, but various questionable tech we develop and use, and slippery slopes going forward)

5. Consider the development or use of evil tech to reflect poorly upon the people involved. Like in an interview: "I see you were a developer at Dystopitools..." or "I see you were a manager at Megajerco..."

"I wasn't in the evildoing department" might be an acceptable explanation.

"I was just following orders" seems less likely to be an acceptable explanation.

Asking for an explanation might be reasonable, depending on the nature of the evildoing.

One benefit I imagine of knowing that we'll have to explain ourselves for associating with evil tech is that individuals will even consider that evil tech is a problem. Otherwise, if all people talk about is total comp, tech stacks, and how we spend the gobs of money we get paid, it's easy to forget the inconvenient aspects we don't talk about, like if we're getting paid to do evil.

Of course, sometimes people have no choice. But other times we rationalize, "Sure, I'm actively helping my employer make the world worse, but I have to put food on my family", when there are less-evil alternatives that also pay enough.

(Precedent: I've previously heard multiple executives say they don't want to hire people from particular prestigious tech companies, because, in so many words, they assume that the person learned bad culture at the company, or something is wrong with them for going there in the first place. Adapting that idea to evil tech development and application, and softening it from denylist to being asked to explain, seems worth considering.)

Start stigmatizing evils before a particular kind of evil is so ubiquitous that there are no alternatives.

Re: Walmart, Delta, and Starbucks are using AI to monitor employee messages

#40

As much as this turns my stomach, this is neither new nor unexpected, and honestly this is fairly benign to many of the things that companies do such as precision location tracking throughout the building, using company-issued phones, and using normal security surveillance to monitor "watercooler" talk and things like that. We had our chance to push back against company surveillance well over a decade ago, and nobody…

May I ask why privacy matters at work? Not trying to be a dick. But shouldn’t people at work be doing only the things they’re paid for on company time?
Post reply on HN