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

cnbc.com

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

#61

Post by tomcam »

kelnos wrote: post #45
tomcam wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Privacy matters wherever you are. Even at work, most people like to believe they are trusted to do what they've said they are going to do without needing to be constantly monitored and micromanaged. Anything else is unsettling and oppressive. I would refuse to work at a company that expected me to give up my privacy during working hours.

But can’t you use your own phone? Also, how would you feel if you were paying employees to act contrary to your interests on your time?

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

#62

Post by wolverine876 »

freedomben wrote: post #8

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 am pessimistic ... etc

Your problem is not management, it's you (if this comment represents you) and your kind. The comment is lazy and just following an absurd fashion: wallowing in despair. Your advice is useless unless people organize and act. You need to do better; we need to do better. Though management could not ask for a 'better' worker, a better agent even (I don't think you are, but you might as well be).

People facing far more difficult odds have organized and won. Think of all the things our ancestors have overcome to build the world we live in, and what do we contribute? 'It's too hard'? 'I'm pessimistic'? No matter what we were working on, I'd eject you as soon as possible.

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

#63

Post by tomcam »

jurynulifcation wrote: post #56
tomcam wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Privacy matters at work because the interests of the employee and the employer are in tension. Do you expect an employee to leave every personal item out of work? Should employees expect to not speak of their personal lives, or to have artifacts of their personal life leak into the workplace? To say that the boundary should be absolute is hopelessly naive. Privacy matters because it is a leaky barrier, and the employ…

I kind of do expect expect to leave their private matters at home. Or the very least, to handle them during break time on their own phones. This does not seem at all oppressive to me.

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

#64

Post by sangnoir »

sandworm101 wrote: post #6

Ok, exactly which communications does this AI monitor? This seems to be internal corporate coms (corporate email, internal chats) which are not subject to privacy. But the article is very unclear, leaving the reader to assume that they are monitoring social media or something else external to the organization. Internal company communcation channels are open to inspection by the company. Whether that company wants to…

> Ok, exactly which communications does this AI monitor? This seems to be internal corporate coms (corporate email, internal chats) which are not subject to privacy

Expectation of privacy doesn't mean automation of surveillance is reasonable or acceptable. If you're out in public, there is no expectation of privacy, and I (a human) may take a picture of you without breaking any social contract. If someone sets up thousands of facial-recognition cameras in public space you use, that changes the calculus by a lot, despite no change in the underlying lack of expectation of privacy. Quantity has a quality of its own.

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

#65

Post by TeMPOraL »

xyst wrote: post #53

US PATRIOT Act essentially normalized domestic spying with FISA courts rubber stamping warrants in the name of “war on terror”. Privacy advocates lost once those towers fell on 2001-09-11. Millennials pushed the aging fossils into the digital world (e-banking/mobile banking, almost everything is digitalized today). Social media changed the way we interact with people. The concept of privacy continues to erode. Gen Z…

You're making it sound like there's some kind of plan behind it. There is no conspiracy. There won't be a direct "skip the middleman" totalitarian level, because governments are too busy chasing their own tails and smelling the farts in a 4-year election cycle to consider anything of a broader scope. Meanwhile, private companies are chasing easy money at the expense of anything that's good, honest or nice, like they always do.

We walked into this situation through decades of individual selfishness, aggregated.

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

#67

Post by kevin_b_er »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #58
throwup238 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the intention everyone who uses this software opens themselves up to age discrimination lawsuits (40 years of age is the cutoff). This is either a really dumb way to market a product or it's actually meant to detect those discriminatory policies so employers can undo them before someone decides to sue.

I think you're assuming the software would be used to punish people who don't like the policies...but what if it's just used to help accommodate groups who don't like the policies?

You are hoping for altruistic behavior in a highly capitalist environment. This is incorrect.

It will not be used for anything but control and punishment.

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

#68

Post by ipaddr »

brvsft wrote: post #13
sandworm101 wrote: post #6

Ok, exactly which communications does this AI monitor? This seems to be internal corporate coms (corporate email, internal chats) which are not subject to privacy. But the article is very unclear, leaving the reader to assume that they are monitoring social media or something else external to the organization. Internal company communcation channels are open to inspection by the company. Whether that company wants to…

> Depending on where you work, there’s a significant chance that artificial intelligence is analyzing your messages on Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom and other popular apps. I don't think it's so unclear, and it sounds like you understand too, internal comms. I know it seems obvious, but a lot of people wouldn't even immediately guess. (My first guess before RTA was Slack or anything like Slack. I always think, when I…

Tell that to any subject the media deems newsworthy. Celebrities are mobbed with photographs or murderers/victims the same.

If that's acceptable where does this fit in your worldview

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

#69

Post by williamcotton »

xyst wrote: post #53

US PATRIOT Act essentially normalized domestic spying with FISA courts rubber stamping warrants in the name of “war on terror”. Privacy advocates lost once those towers fell on 2001-09-11. Millennials pushed the aging fossils into the digital world (e-banking/mobile banking, almost everything is digitalized today). Social media changed the way we interact with people. The concept of privacy continues to erode. Gen Z…

The concept of the public space is also eroding and it is overshadowed on these forums by privacy advocates.

Privacy is indeed important but only up to the limit that it intrudes upon the public accountability necessary for a republic to function.

We seem fine with letting governments and large corporations know where we live and how much we pay in taxes yet are hesitant to make this information public due to fear of our fellow citizens. That is a complete erosion of social trust and cohesion.

Someone please put a science-fiction sheen on the death of the public sphere. There is more than the dominant 1984-inspired narratives at play!

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

#70

Post by snypher »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #65
xyst wrote: post #53

US PATRIOT Act essentially normalized domestic spying with FISA courts rubber stamping warrants in the name of “war on terror”. Privacy advocates lost once those towers fell on 2001-09-11. Millennials pushed the aging fossils into the digital world (e-banking/mobile banking, almost everything is digitalized today). Social media changed the way we interact with people. The concept of privacy continues to erode. Gen Z…

You're making it sound like there's some kind of plan behind it. There is no conspiracy. There won't be a direct "skip the middleman" totalitarian level, because governments are too busy chasing their own tails and smelling the farts in a 4-year election cycle to consider anything of a broader scope. Meanwhile, private companies are chasing easy money at the expense of anything that's good, honest or nice, like they…

This is why I believe that it will be a corporate-ocracy, as the corporation has a much longer lifespan than some political short-term influence. However corporations can also 'fly too close to the flame' in the political sphere. Whoever comes out on top will be the product of their own political ideology and not the red-vs-blue politics.
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