Uneven power always brings abuse. Unions, strong worker rights, etc. help with it. Equality is a great defense for all kinds of abuse.
> “A harmful customer interaction can drain a worker’s psychological resources in different ways, and those reactions can carry over into how they perform their job and interact with people afterward,”
The same goes when an algorithm makes workers feel that they cannot answer back to customers. Customers have rights, but workers have them too. A worker is not a person that does everything that the employer asks for but a person with a job that is always limited in responsibility.
Apps have worked around this classifying workers as "contractors" and removing many of their protections. Thankfully many countries have fixed this abuse. It needs to continue to improve.
> For rideshare drivers, delivery workers, housekeepers
These jobs are in the process of being automated, in this order. Any effective effort to curb harassment of these workers is likely to add friction or expense that accelerates automation. Given that it's difficult to know what is the best policy for these people. Is it progress to have fewer such jobs with better working conditions?
Only in a heavily contrived, limited context (city with a grid-based layout) will these jobs be replaced. I do gig work deliveries in the mountains of Tennessee and driving down 5% grade switchbacks and across streams isn't something I see automation handling any time soon, if ever (you can barely get a signal to confirm delivery 30-40% of the time).
Humans need to accept that other humans aren't just parts you can swap. It's not hard to treat others decently, it's just that now everyone expects technology and other systems to arbitrate human interaction to the point where decorum is basically non-existent. More automation isn't the answer, less is (if we're going to survive as a species).
> More automation isn't the answer, less is (if we're going to survive as a species).
In a world with a trend of less automation, indeed optimal policy will be far different. But given that we are not in that world and appear to be moving rapidly in the other direction, we shouldn't write policy as if it were so.
> I do gig work deliveries in the mountains of Tennessee and driving down 5% grade switchbacks and across streams isn't something I see automation handling any time soon.
I agree. Human elevator operators are still necessary in some places. But we should base broad scale policy around the near term future for most people, most of the time.
At that point, we could just write policy to slow the pace of automating jobs, so I don't really get why you're suggesting this is an argument in favor of ignoring to both problems
I don't favor ignoring the problem, I favor not ignoring the trade offs.
My preference would be to expand reputation systems such that a harassed driver can post her low review of the passenger, along with audio & video clips, such that the next driver can make an informed choice.
Certainly. It requires composure. I've wanted to drop several people who spoke to me out of line (on both the pickup and delivery side), but I'd say that's a direct side-effect of this technology-mediated society. They do it because they think/know they can get away with it (and expect a surrogate mommy/daddy in the form of a corporation or the authorities to protect them).
I tell my wife constantly that we need to bring the mob back for this very reason. There are a lot of people who've never been punched in the face and it shows.
I do hope I misread your comment and got the wrong end of the stick.
> Any effective effort to curb harassment of these workers is likely to add friction or expense that accelerates automation.
So when a hotel housekeeper is cleaning a room and a guest sexually assaults her we just ignore it because she'll be replaced by a robot soon.
> what is the best policy for these people.
"These people" deserve to work in a safe environment and be treated with respect, just like every one of us would expect. We can't just ignore it and hope it goes away.
With the rideshare drivers it's happening right now at decent scale. It's beginning to with urban deliveries. With housekeeping and more complex deliveries, it depends on robotic capabilities that are accelerating along with AI, and coming soon.
"Coming soon" is what people have said for years about this stuff. I'm pretty sure I've heard people say that self-driving cars are coming soon soon since I was a kid, and yet I'm living in the largest city in the US and every time I call an Uber, there's a human driving it. If there's going to be a time when I can book a cleaner for my house and a robot is going to come instead of a person, that's probably decades away.
In areas of these cities you currently have a choice between human driven and self driven taxis:
Atlanta, GA, Austin, TX, Beijing, Chongqing, Dallas, TX, Denver, CO, Dubai, Fort Worth, TX, Guangzhou, Houston, TX, Las Vegas, NV, Los Angeles, CA, Miami, FL, Nashville, TN, Orlando, FL, Phoenix, AZ, San Antonio, TX, San Diego, CA, San Francisco Bay Area, CA, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tampa, FL, Wuhan, Abu Dhabi
I can tell you with absolute certainty that we are a decade or more away from a robot being capable of cleaning a bathroom as quickly as a human can. If you don't believe me, feel free to ask questions, I'd love to discuss.
For some people all jobs are already automateable and workers should just shut up and do what they are told and accept peanuts as payment. It is not realistic, but it is a fear mongering strategy to get away with all kinds of abuses. (Like the ones mentioned in the article).
Uneven power always brings abuse. Unions, strong worker rights, etc. help with it. Equality is a great defense for all kinds of abuse.
> “A harmful customer interaction can drain a worker’s psychological resources in different ways, and those reactions can carry over into how they perform their job and interact with people afterward,”
The same goes when an algorithm makes workers feel that they cannot answer back to customers. Customers have rights, but workers have them too. A worker is not a person that does everything that the employer asks for but a person with a job that is always limited in responsibility.
Apps have worked around this classifying workers as "contractors" and removing many of their protections. Thankfully many countries have fixed this abuse. It needs to continue to improve.
> For rideshare drivers, delivery workers, housekeepers
These jobs are in the process of being automated, in this order. Any effective effort to curb harassment of these workers is likely to add friction or expense that accelerates automation. Given that it's difficult to know what is the best policy for these people. Is it progress to have fewer such jobs with better working conditions?
Only in a heavily contrived, limited context (city with a grid-based layout) will these jobs be replaced. I do gig work deliveries in the mountains of Tennessee and driving down 5% grade switchbacks and across streams isn't something I see automation handling any time soon, if ever (you can barely get a signal to confirm delivery 30-40% of the time).
Humans need to accept that other humans aren't just parts you can swap. It's not hard to treat others decently, it's just that now everyone expects technology and other systems to arbitrate human interaction to the point where decorum is basically non-existent. More automation isn't the answer, less is (if we're going to survive as a species).
> More automation isn't the answer, less is (if we're going to survive as a species).
In a world with a trend of less automation, indeed optimal policy will be far different. But given that we are not in that world and appear to be moving rapidly in the other direction, we shouldn't write policy as if it were so.
> I do gig work deliveries in the mountains of Tennessee and driving down 5% grade switchbacks and across streams isn't something I see automation handling any time soon.
I agree. Human elevator operators are still necessary in some places. But we should base broad scale policy around the near term future for most people, most of the time.
At that point, we could just write policy to slow the pace of automating jobs, so I don't really get why you're suggesting this is an argument in favor of ignoring to both problems
I don't favor ignoring the problem, I favor not ignoring the trade offs.
My preference would be to expand reputation systems such that a harassed driver can post her low review of the passenger, along with audio & video clips, such that the next driver can make an informed choice.
Yes, but then also no. There are natural conflicts which make treating people decently, ie. how they want to be treated, very, very, very, very hard.
Certainly. It requires composure. I've wanted to drop several people who spoke to me out of line (on both the pickup and delivery side), but I'd say that's a direct side-effect of this technology-mediated society. They do it because they think/know they can get away with it (and expect a surrogate mommy/daddy in the form of a corporation or the authorities to protect them).
I tell my wife constantly that we need to bring the mob back for this very reason. There are a lot of people who've never been punched in the face and it shows.
I do hope I misread your comment and got the wrong end of the stick.
> Any effective effort to curb harassment of these workers is likely to add friction or expense that accelerates automation.
So when a hotel housekeeper is cleaning a room and a guest sexually assaults her we just ignore it because she'll be replaced by a robot soon.
> what is the best policy for these people.
"These people" deserve to work in a safe environment and be treated with respect, just like every one of us would expect. We can't just ignore it and hope it goes away.
What timelines are we talking about?
If you try hard enough, these jobs "are in the process of being automated" since the invention of the train and washing machine.
With the rideshare drivers it's happening right now at decent scale. It's beginning to with urban deliveries. With housekeeping and more complex deliveries, it depends on robotic capabilities that are accelerating along with AI, and coming soon.
"Coming soon" is what people have said for years about this stuff. I'm pretty sure I've heard people say that self-driving cars are coming soon soon since I was a kid, and yet I'm living in the largest city in the US and every time I call an Uber, there's a human driving it. If there's going to be a time when I can book a cleaner for my house and a robot is going to come instead of a person, that's probably decades away.
In areas of these cities you currently have a choice between human driven and self driven taxis:
I can tell you with absolute certainty that we are a decade or more away from a robot being capable of cleaning a bathroom as quickly as a human can. If you don't believe me, feel free to ask questions, I'd love to discuss.
> What timelines are we talking about?
For some people all jobs are already automateable and workers should just shut up and do what they are told and accept peanuts as payment. It is not realistic, but it is a fear mongering strategy to get away with all kinds of abuses. (Like the ones mentioned in the article).
[dead]
(companies everywhere cheer very quietly as it's not their problem thanks to contractor hiring arrangements) sigh