Why oh why are we so intent on turning all of these dystopian sci-fi shows from 10-15 years ago into our current reality.
Because 'line go up' is the only globally shared value left in modern society
Japan chain uses AI to gauge staff smiles, speech tones in QoS push
11–20 of 52 posts
Re: Japan chain uses AI to gauge staff smiles, speech tones in QoS push
#12You either obey the AI or be replaced by them.
Re: Japan chain uses AI to gauge staff smiles, speech tones in QoS push
#13I wonder how good it is at defecting fake smiles and attitudes. Because I'd rather interact with non-smiling staff than someone who is obviously faking it for the camera.
Reminds me the "Welcome to costco, I love you" scene from Idiocracy: https://youtu.be/ZIFCWpn4qQ4?si=nJpGjA33-sf5QE_Z
Re: Japan chain uses AI to gauge staff smiles, speech tones in QoS push
#14I can see legitimate pushback in physical workplaces. But for low-value off-premises work, particularly at the low end, the battle is lost. The tech might rank staff in the interim. But the point is to use the constant feed of telemetry to train a replacement.
Re: Japan chain uses AI to gauge staff smiles, speech tones in QoS push
#15[dead]
Re: Japan chain uses AI to gauge staff smiles, speech tones in QoS push
#16This is not surprising given that Japan is an intensely conformist society. Individuality is not something they value much.
This isn't Japan-specific, and retail jobs basically anywhere in the world are similarly soul-crushing. Don't tell me you think the job of a walmart cashier in america values individuality and freedom in some uniquely american way.
Support staff in the US, and anywhere, for ages have had all their customer interactions recorded, and sentiment analysis run to automatically gauge them as being nice enough or not.
Amazon tracks warehouse worker's work-speed, and even has little tablets with games to try and make people work faster. You get fake virtual points and level up for fulfilling orders faster.
The company behind this also says it's trying to gamify a job requirement. These retail workers are required to smile and greet customers, and now it seems like they have an app that's giving them fake virtual points for doing a "good job".
Re: Japan chain uses AI to gauge staff smiles, speech tones in QoS push
#17This is not surprising given that Japan is an intensely conformist society. Individuality is not something they value much.
It's not like individualist cultures are immune to being horrible to service workers.
I was at lunch today watching a guy complain to some random employee at a Fuddrucker's that they'd put the mushrooms on top of the melted cheese rather than put the mushrooms on first and then melted the cheese on top of them. He was berating this poor girl for long enough that it was still ongoing when my food - which had been ordered only a minute before his had been up to the counter - was ready.
This wasn't in Japan or Korea. It was a middle-aged, apparently-decently-well-off white guy at a medium-upscale mall in suburban California.
Re: Japan chain uses AI to gauge staff smiles, speech tones in QoS push
#18I wonder how good it is at defecting fake smiles and attitudes. Because I'd rather interact with non-smiling staff than someone who is obviously faking it for the camera. Reminds me the "Welcome to costco, I love you" scene from Idiocracy: https://youtu.be/ZIFCWpn4qQ4?si=nJpGjA33-sf5QE_Z
There's a funny anecdote about Walmart trying to open stores here in Germany, and when the business eventually failed, apparently one of the reasons was that German customers were routinely freaked out by the completely fake smiling staff and the weird company motivational chants in the morning.
When you see the sort of pearly white stereotypical American diner smile almost everyone would associate it with insincerity and fakeness or gullibility.
Also as a side note, that may be a pretty good benchmark for how clever AIs are. How many systems can figure out how the "hide the pain Harold" type of image is actually perceived by people?
Re: Japan chain uses AI to gauge staff smiles, speech tones in QoS push
#19Oh god, I feel sorry for these employees. It’s so disgusting and inhumane to just think about somebody being forced to smile and judged by how good they do that, by a machine!
Re: Japan chain uses AI to gauge staff smiles, speech tones in QoS push
#20I usually roll my eyes and move on when someone makes an inappropriate comparison to 1984.
So this is actually quite a nice surprise that this is literally something that would be in 1984!