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Amazon’s AI Warehouses Isolate Workers and Hinder Union Organizing, New Report Finds (www.404media.co)
submitted 5 months ago by JRepin@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.ml
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Amazon’s use of AI and robotics in its warehouses isolates workers and negatively impacts union organizing drives, a new report finds.

The report, conducted by Oxford University research team Fairwork and the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, aimed to explain how AI impacts warehouse workers by interviewing employees at robotic Amazon warehouses in the U.K.

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[-] ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 26 points 5 months ago

“In manual fulfillment centres, Jane would walk around the warehouse. That would be tiring—she could easily do 15 or 16 km per day, often more—but at least she would see people,” the report states. “In a robotic fulfillment centre, associates in pick work at fixed stations, with just the robots for company.”

I remember someone on Lemmy linking to a story about how AI effectively isolated workers from their colleagues in order to be "efficient". Now, I see it as a way to break solidarity between workers.

[-] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 11 points 5 months ago

Surely AI makes them so efficient they're free to spend more time organizing a union right? /s

[-] pavnilschanda@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

That's already being done to the general populace, especially now with sophisticated algorithms tailoring social media posts to individual needs. It's gonna get worse with LLM-powered chatbots

this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
218 points (99.1% liked)

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