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Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

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Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#111

Post by futureshock »

golergka wrote: post #54
fxtentacle wrote: post #50

Reading this, I'm so glad that in all of the EU it is illegal to fire someone purely based on a software decision. There's a minimum level of humanity that we should extend to everyone. Letting a known faulty AI decide if someone will have money for food tomorrow is way across the line. I'm not surprised that treating humans like cattle on their way to slaughter is hugely profitable. But I'm not sure we want to opera…

> Reading this, I'm so glad that in all of the EU it is illegal to fire someone purely based on a software decision. Why do people treat working for a company as something different from selling any other services or goods? If there was a law that limited your ability to cancel a gym membership or going to a different supermarket, you would rightfully object — it's not a government's business to get involved in your…

First of all, have an upvote, which is both the agree and disagree button, as long as a person contributes to the conversation.

Next, I think you are contributing, because companies really, truly operate as if people were flesh robots and your perspective, rather than being trolling, is actually dominant in corporations.

Thirdly, that you could potentially have accepted the narrative that we are fleshbots, ready for exploitation, no different than any other raw material and not needing any more care or consideration than cattle or cotton says something deeply disturbing things about the state of humanism.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#112

Post by ben_w »

Hobli wrote: post #24
Tistron wrote: post #4

Reading articles like this makes me appreciate living in the EU. It's not always great, but clearly it could be worse. Article 1 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights states "Human dignity is inviolable. It must be respected and protected." I feel like that would be broken were we to allow this behaviour towards workers.

The EU like Bezos didnt care about it much while their empires expanded. The "enlightenment" happened only after their arms race to colonize the planet ended in world wars. Learning takes time. Emporer Bezos is thankfully a tad smarter than the Kings and Queens of the EU and his road to "enlightenment" will be much shorter with less devastation and trauma. I just hope, after they learn their lessons, the Amazon corpo…

The EU did not exist when the member states were expanding their empires. The UK joined the predecessor to the EU as a result of losing much of its empire.

Indeed, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention of Human Rights both happened in the gap between WW2 and the Treaty of Rome.

Though all this is a somewhat of an apples-to-vodka comparison, given the monarchs in Europe who are the same age as Bezos (e.g. Felipe VI) have a fairly different power dynamic than the founder, executive chairman, and 10% owner of a conglomerate valued at a trillion dollars even in those cases where they’re still getting their faces on all the money (Felipe doesn’t).

This is all tangential to how well the article characterises the working environment at Amazon — Gell-Mann applies at the best of times, and Big Tech is big enough for capital-P-Politics to be important, but likewise none of that makes it wrong, and if it’s right, Amazon has no excuse for repeating well-trodden mistakes.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#113

Post by tremon »

WalterBright wrote: post #77
fxtentacle wrote: post #50

Reading this, I'm so glad that in all of the EU it is illegal to fire someone purely based on a software decision. There's a minimum level of humanity that we should extend to everyone. Letting a known faulty AI decide if someone will have money for food tomorrow is way across the line. I'm not surprised that treating humans like cattle on their way to slaughter is hugely profitable. But I'm not sure we want to opera…

People have historically complained a lot about firings not being based on an objective formula. Now the complaint is an objective formula is being used. > WW2 prisoner camps For starters, those camps would shoot anyone who tried to leave. Not the same thing at all.

Rather, the complaint is that the supposedly "objective" formula is completely obscured to both the victim and the executioner. A judge isn't called "objective" for deciding the outcome of a trial as a black-box call. If it were, we'd have replaced the justice system with the Vegas system long ago. A judge is called "objective" because they clearly articulate the inputs, scope, weightings and broader implications they considered to arrive at their outputs.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#114

Post by patall »

johnchristopher wrote: post #58
dave_sullivan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are certainly scales, it's not all uniform. But the EU is a big place and people are free to pick which country they live in. It's disingenuous to suggest it's all the same thing. The larger point of EU workers having more rights is, on average, very true. The US (and China and Russia) treats their workers very poorly by comparison.

> But the EU is a big place and people are free to pick which country they live in. There are limits though. You have a 3 months period where you can stay in another UE country then the national authorities can ask for your leaving. There are statuses that allows you to stay longer (work, studies, retirement, etc.) but those statuses have requirements and obligations. You can't take your tent, set it up somewhere in…

> You can't take your tent, set it up somewhere in another country and declare you live there without some fiscal authorities coming for you at some point.

Can you do that within any one single country? In Germany I have to register within 4 weeks of moving anywhere, it has to be a place that is registered as residential zone and you need an owner-ship or rental agreement certificate (even when living with your parents). Nothing of that is about your citizenship, so what does it have to do with another country?

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#115

Post by mlindner »

Tistron wrote: post #4

Reading articles like this makes me appreciate living in the EU. It's not always great, but clearly it could be worse. Article 1 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights states "Human dignity is inviolable. It must be respected and protected." I feel like that would be broken were we to allow this behaviour towards workers.

To each to their own. I'm glad I don't live in the EU as I know I would get too stressed out by the restrictions placed upon individuals living there.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#116

Post by acatton »

navaati wrote: post #98
johnchristopher wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the EU is a big place and people are free to pick which country they live in. There are limits though. You have a 3 months period where you can stay in another UE country then the national authorities can ask for your leaving. There are statuses that allows you to stay longer (work, studies, retirement, etc.) but those statuses have requirements and obligations. You can't take your tent, set it up somewhere in…

What the hell ! I moved from France to Ireland and there was no question asked at any point, I just booked a ferry and rented a flat, no paperwork at all and I could live there as long as I wanted to. I'm not so much saying you're wrong as afraid you're right, do you have sources ?

https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=460&langId=en

> People who are employed in another EU country are entitled to live there. Jobseekers are also allowed to stay in another country while they are looking for a job. (See the right to look for a job)

> The host country may require them, as "EU migrant workers", to register with the authorities as residents. (See Directive 2004/38/EC)

> Other legal and administrative formalities depend on the length of stay – up to 3 months, more than 3 months, or permanent.

https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/residence/residence-ri...

> Still looking for a job after 6 months

> […]

> Can you be deported or asked to leave?

> Your host country can ask you to leave if you can't prove that you have a realistic chance of finding work there.

> In exceptional cases, your host country can deport you on grounds of public policy, public security, or public health - but only if it can prove you pose a serious threat.

> The deportation decision or request to leave must be given to you in writing. It must state all the reasons for your deportation and specify how you can appeal and by when.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#117

Post by zopa »

WalterBright wrote: post #77
fxtentacle wrote: post #50

Reading this, I'm so glad that in all of the EU it is illegal to fire someone purely based on a software decision. There's a minimum level of humanity that we should extend to everyone. Letting a known faulty AI decide if someone will have money for food tomorrow is way across the line. I'm not surprised that treating humans like cattle on their way to slaughter is hugely profitable. But I'm not sure we want to opera…

People have historically complained a lot about firings not being based on an objective formula. Now the complaint is an objective formula is being used. > WW2 prisoner camps For starters, those camps would shoot anyone who tried to leave. Not the same thing at all.

> People have historically complained a lot about firings not being based on an objective formula. Now the complaint is an objective formula is being used.

Cute line, but obviously people have always wanted criteria to be objective and fair.

If the rule was "take the ordinal value of each letter in employee's name, sum mod 365, and if the result matches the day of the year, they're fired!" -- that's completely objective, and also bonkers. Nobody ever thought all objective formulas were good, and it's sophistry to suggest otherwise.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#118

Post by wnkrshm »

re-actor wrote: post #103
WalterBright wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have historically complained a lot about firings not being based on an objective formula. Now the complaint is an objective formula is being used. > WW2 prisoner camps For starters, those camps would shoot anyone who tried to leave. Not the same thing at all.

Just because there's an algorithm involved doesn't make it objective in any way. There is no objective answer to "How productive is this employee", it's not something you can measure empirically.

Also, if you purely go by productivity, who knows, maybe the data says that people without kids and people who are sterile are just better according to the metric.

While I think you can measure 'how productive is this employee' according to some metrics, the problem is in the metrics. Someone who is mediocre at his job in the quantified sense can be a huge boon to the company due to soft skills or knowledge.

Someone not living for their job could be important to an entire community.

It is a philosophical problem, in addition to finding any kind of metric that actually kinda works.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#119

Post by bryanrasmussen »

yanderekko wrote: post #71
fxtentacle wrote: post #50

Reading this, I'm so glad that in all of the EU it is illegal to fire someone purely based on a software decision. There's a minimum level of humanity that we should extend to everyone. Letting a known faulty AI decide if someone will have money for food tomorrow is way across the line. I'm not surprised that treating humans like cattle on their way to slaughter is hugely profitable. But I'm not sure we want to opera…

>Letting a known faulty AI decide if someone will have money for food tomorrow is way across the line. So is the implication here that humans are less faulty, or that there's something intrinsically wrong about an AI making this decision rather than a human? If the former, then this is an issue that the technology will probably eventually solve. If the latter, well... that doesn't seem very justifiable, to say the le…

>So is the implication here that humans are less faulty, or that there's something intrinsically wrong about an AI making this decision rather than a human?

Many people in the world have noticed the difficulty in getting people to change their minds once made up.

>And if some sclerotic regulations try to slow this down, that will likely be unfortunate for consumers.

Maybe not the consumers that have jobs though.

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