The fact that they breezily concede that it won't be used in countries with stricter labour laws

'Missing from desk': AI webcam raises remote surveillance concerns

System developed by French firm Teleperformance monitors home workers for ‘breaches’

For anyone concerned that an era of home working could also become one of remote surveillance, the training video for Teleperformance’s in-house webcam security system, called TP Observer, is the stuff of bad dreams.

Explained by “Anna”, a desk-sitting avatar complete with an artificial voice, the video introduces TP Observer as “a risk-mitigation tool that monitors and tracks real time employee behaviour, and detects any violations to pre-set business rules”.

Anna explains that this means home workers will have an AI-enabled webcam added to their computers that recognises their face, tags their location and scans for “breaches” of rules at random points during a shift.

These include an “unknown person” detected at the desk via the facial recognition software, “missing from desk”, “detecting an idle user” and “unauthorised mobile phone usage”.

Anna says: “Any breach detected by the AI triggers a real-time alert to the supervisor for further actions.” This means a still photo is snapped and sent to a manager.

The video includes a series of avatar-staff asking questions, including one who asks whether the system is “a breach of my privacy at home”. The manager tells him the scanning is needed to “help us with risk mitigation and data security, which is required by most of our customers”.

Another digital employee asks if they will get into trouble if children or other family members approach their home workplace. Not “as long as the people in the background are not directly looking into the screen, or very close to it”. Anna replies. Staff should sit with a wall behind them “to avoid such breaches”, she says. Strong lights should be used for night shifts, so the camera can see properly.

Teleperformance said the system would not be used for UK staff, but it is expected to be used in a number of 30-plus other countries where the French-based multinational operates and where labour laws are less strict.

Source

So basically a call centre operator is even more crap for their staff than it is for the people who have to call them.

Hard to believe!

This quote is particularly chilling.
Your child sits on your lap whilst you are working and you risk punishment if they look towards the screen.. seriously wtf?!?

I do feel sorry for those who have no choice but to work for these slave drivers.

I don't do video calls, or rather I do with my broken camera.

Tom

We (thankfully) have a router that can't really support both video and audio. Or so we say...

It’s been a decade since I did an MBA, but one of the core questions that popped up in many cases discussed was „shareholder vs stakeholder“. I know that we currently have some prominent examples like Amazon doing the opposite, but at least back then did all research show that companies who treated their employees better than their competitors did made massive ROI on those costs.

AI is a pretty new topic and it has a lot of ethical challenges- Microsoft had triggered quite some debate some years ago when their „office graph“ started to analyze your efficiency- based on some preset logic. They got enough backlash that they decided to only show their analysis to employees and not the manager... but I am quite sure that wasn’t the original intention. I personally believe that it is an area that urgently needs groundrules through labor laws. Otherwise will at least some companies take advantage of the tech in ways we can’t even foresee now.

I'm sure the employees will be replaced with AIs soon enough for this to be a non-issue

Well labour laws will protect those lucky enough to live under their jurisdiction, however I think it should go further. People unfairly dismissed in say India should be able to challenge Teleperformance in the French courts e.g. through class action law firms.

Wasn't all this ground breaking technology supposed to make us all redundant anyway with 'the workers'
composed of androids and robots.

Problem is that it's all still in the Power Point presentation stage.

It’s an interesting development that’s for sure. In China there are already apps that people have to run in the office which tracks movement and displays how long employees are at their desk.

In my opinion companies that carry on with this outdated world view will be the ones that suffer. We’ve already seen during the Covid crisis how different companies have behaved. Some have still forced people into the office despite state guidance. Employee resentment has increased and motivation has decreased within these companies as a result.

Ultimately companies need to move away from regarding time as their main KPI. Companies that reward productivity, output and results will be more successful than those more concentrated on whether employees have spent 8 hours at their desk.

The era of trying to pad out ones 8 hour day with pointless tasks like 360 reviews, performance review objectives unrelated to ones job and just appearing to look busy are thankfully coming to an end.

Well, I'd argue they should have a case against their employer, not the software provider of their employer...no?



Thats essentially the "supply chain laws" currently discussed in pretty much all western countries. Thats what the Swiss voted on last year and while a majority of the voters wanted it, did the majority of the cantons throw it out... because there are many small, conservative cantons.

Not really a dystopian nightmare beginning. Bad managers have wanted to monitor their staff for decades. I wrote a program fifteen years ago to report on activity on my client's computer network. The data is gathered at userid level.

It wasn't used to monitor individuals (it was a systems tool to look for problematic processes) but it could have been. Steps were taken so that user identifiable data was hidden. Reports were only in aggregate.

What particularly stupid is that if an employee is taking the piss, any competent* manager will spot it without surveillance.



* And there lies the nub of the issue...

__________________
Down with racism. Long live miscegenation!

And, they are in their own home.

My teams are all operating remotely, and not exactly through choice.

When we have our calls, they are always apologizing when the dog, cat, children, partner, postman interrupts.

I always tell them they have nothing to apologize for. I’m intruding into their home.