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Microsoft Wants To Monitor Your Workplace With AI, Computer Vision and the Cloud (gizmodo.com)
"If you're an employee under the heel of a giant corporation you should probably be terrified by the vision of the future of connected gadgets that Microsoft just revealed at its Build developer conference here in Seattle," warns Gizmodo. Slashdot reader dryriver writes:
Gizmodo reports on a Microsoft Workplace Monitoring demo where CCTV cameras watch a workplace -- like a construction site -- on 24/7 basis, and AI algorithms constantly oversee and evaluate what is happening in that workplace. The system can track where employees are, where physical equipment and tools are at what time, who does what at what time in this workplace and apparently use Cloud-based AI of some sort to evaluate what is happening in the workplace being monitored. Spotting employees misbehaving, breaking workplace rules or putting themselves and expensive equipment at risk may be the intended "value proposition" this system brings to the workplace. Another aspect may be reducing insurance premiums employers pay by creating a strict, highly monitored work environment. But the system is also very Big Brother -- an AI is monitoring people and equipment in a workplace in realtime at all times, and all the data ends up being processed in the Microsoft Cloud.
Gizmodo gave their article the title, "Microsoft's Latest Workplace Tech Demos Creep Me Out."
Gizmodo gave their article the title, "Microsoft's Latest Workplace Tech Demos Creep Me Out."
Can't wait for this to become compulsory and industry standard. Just what the cube farm needed more discomfort!
Wonder if Microsoft has implemented this software on their own premises? Given Microsoft's track record, how long will it take some hacker to mess with the AI and gets some company on the hook for wrongful termination based on erroneous data?
Captcha: captive
Technology was supposed to make our lives easier and free us. How come with every advance, it feels more like oppression?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Because of course, Microsoft will have absolutely perfect security, preventing any and all attempts to hack in and steal it.
You can absolutely trust them. So feel fine recording everything your employees do, allowing your competitors to buy the videos. Microsoft of course will try their very best to protect your company's most important data.
They will even refund the money you pay them after you lose millions. If you can figure out what happened.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
to make the technology mandatory in the workplace. After all, the necessity of tracking everyone and everything, every piece of equipment, logging when the most menial task is accomplished or when employees are not being 100% productive will be necessary when the logs are used by the corporate bean counters to justify their own positions. On second thought... if it eliminates bean counters, it's a good thing.
Almost seriously, if you could log and maintain all that data (on a Microsoft cloud of course, we'll have none of that pesky internal IT overhead) think of the possibilities for litigating EVERYTHING. If not legislated mandatory, the technology will become the de facto standard by way of defending against and bringing of legal suits. Of course Microsoft will reserve the right to mine all the data stored on their cloud for 'quality assurance' purposes. Sounds like some corporate execs wet dream right there.
There are pretty strict limits on monitoring employees in Europe. These are not merely in place to protect human rights. As it turns out, employees monitored permanently are under more significantly stress, perform worse, make more mistakes, have more sick days and have about zero loyalty to their employer. Pretty much the same reason why slave-labor is usually of low quality, quality too low for modern jobs.
As is typical for them, a Microsoft "innovation" makes things worse for everybody. Microsoft just does not have it. They are fundamentally lacking any understanding of how the world actually works. No surprise for a company that owes the single reason why they are big to a historical accident.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Management needs to remain mindful of the fact that the company will lose value when they cannot find employees willing to work for a company where there is no trust relationship between the workers and management.
Back 10-15 years ago, Microsoft had a reputation for getting their products into businesses seen as having Microsoft-resistant tech folks by completely bypassing those tech folks... wining and dining VPs or even the CEO, who then mandated that the company was going to implement Exchange (or whatever). This just seems like a variant of that older playbook.
#DeleteChrome
Monitored and evaluated by a computer every minute of the workday, sounds like fucking paradise.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
said that this kind of monitoring is illegal in my country (Italy), when I hear this kind of proposal I feel a compulsive need of revolt...
I remember in the 80es or 90es, when there was yet another craze for the latest fad in 'efficiency', and some people had to clock in and -out to go to a break or the toilet. Imagine the surprise, when it turned out that people don't thrive when they feel they are not trusted to do their job well, and productivity fell. Perhaps this will catch on in management circles, for a while, but it will fizzle out in the end, because it will cost money and it will harm productivity.
Monitoring, monitoring, eggs, beans and monitoring. That hasn't got much monitoring in it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Have gnu, will travel.
That whole citizen emancipation BS was a lie sold to gullible hippies back in the day and has now been swallowed wholesale by a credulous Millennial generation who happily sell their privacy down the river for some cheap virtual baubles. By the time they wise up and realise what they've done it'll be too late. Old head, young shoulders - never happens.
My old employer sold its sould to MS last year. I fully expect those employees left (after outsourcing it all to an Indian Company NIIT) will soon be tracked with Piece of Dogshite.
Indeed, the BORG is with us.
Do people really think that they will put up with this surveillance 24/7? At home, at the movies with the family? Well it will track you if you carry any workplace issued kit (eg a phone) with you.
Fuck no! MS can go take a dump for all I care. I am so glad that I got rid of all my Windows systems.
Phew!
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
We saw the demo in the online conference. We joked it would announce, "Fred is picking his nose in cubicle 47, which is a violation of health and safety guidelines! Fred will be escorted out..."
Table-ized A.I.
As it turns out, employees monitored permanently are under more significantly stress, perform worse, make more mistakes, have more sick days and have about zero loyalty to their employer.
That's really the important point here. Draconian management may extract a little more productivity in the short run (maybe) but end up with malicious compliance, employees who do the bare minimum, and spend as much time figuring ways around the system as they do actually producing. And, as mentioned, zero loyalty. That type of management responds by cracking down even more, and productivity drops further.
Treating people decently actually works. But that isn't exactly what's taught in MBA programs.
A good manager's job is to remove obstacles to productivity, enable the staff, and then get out of the way.
Someone who I consider my management mentor told me long ago when I first had a management position, "Your job is to sit in your office and wait for someone to bring you a problem." And while that was something of a simplification, the basics of it were true then and are true now.
IANAL, but there is a reason why any sane company has record retention policies and other deliberate forms of 'blinders'.
..." 'Ding! Not certified for railing installation'. 'Ding! Load overhead! Ding welding arc exposure! Ding! Ding! Ding! ....'
Once you begin to observe and collect some stream of information, it doesn't reduce your exposure, it might actually increase it. I can already see attorney's salivating at the opportunity for discovery. Nobody does anything perfect 100% of the time, and it is not uncommon for safety rules to conflict with one another, or actually have to break a rule to rectify an emergent and immediately dangerous situation. The equity considerations are enormous also - if an employee were fired or disciplined for 'X', their attorney could simply ask to see all examples of 'X' that occurred previously, and if the dispositions of those cases were identical. Or how about the qualifications and certification of the person that wrote those business rules in the first place. 'Ding! You are standing on the edge of a ditch!" "I am INSTALLING a railing to prevent people from falling in a ditch
I seriously doubt that the image recognition would function in an actual construction site. My Saws All is currently covered in sheet rock dust and is practically invisible. The visual noise environment is incredible - piles or random sized off cut, dust, lighting conditions which change minute by minute as work lights move, view fields blocked by staged materials, wind blowing sheet plastic, cords and lines criss-crossing, paint-overspray, reflections off glass shards and sheet metal scraps, on and on. I found their 'stage' fairly amusing, even a retail location doesn't have things arranged so neatly.
You basically create an enormous red light camera situation, where people slam on their breaks, accelerate unnecessarily, pay attention to the light and walk signal counters instead of actually driving - i.e. people alter their behaviors to fit being observed and issued a violation, not optimizing safety.
The aviation industry incident reporting system has a proven loop which actually improves safety - because it is distributed, anonymous, pervasive.
It adds nothing to actual safety - it's like a home alarm going off after the crooks are long gone.
CP/M? The UNIX family was created in 1969 and is again the Nr 1 OS in the world these days, and that is for good reason. You seem to be lacking in knowledge of computing history. And even MULTICS, continually developed for the intermediate time would have blown anything away that MS ever had or ever will have.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Thanks.
Incidentally, the 5-day 8-hour work-week was identified as the best for overall productivity back by Henry Ford and others and they certainly did not want to do nice tings for their employees. Ignoring facts does not make them go away.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This article is about companies this time. Not the Govt, so thank you die hard capitalist. Profit over everything right? POE on the PowerPoint. POE!!
One of the greatest keys to efficiency in many types of positions, especially those which require sitting behind a desk, is employees knowing under their own judgment when it is okay to goof off for two or three minutes here and there. I am not talking about the manager facebooking all day, I am talk about the people who get things done. It is important for desk jockeys who know the workflow and their environment well enough to be able to stop what they are doing for a moment, scan some headlines, toss a stress ball around, or whatever, and then get back to it. This produces better work and a happier workplace. Lunches are great and so are breaks. But being able to take a quick BS moment or two out of the day is essential. I could carry on about this as a philosophy, but I'm betting most people here know what I am talking about. We do not need this. We cannot have this... well, unless it means firing deadweight middle management. Perhaps then we can make a deal.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
but but but but......"with a computer!"
Twinstiq, game news
Contrary to common belief on slashdot, not every company would want this, and even then, not every manager would want this for their department. When it comes to management, there are generally two schools of thought:
1) Employees are fundamentally lazy and require constant supervision for maximum productivity
2) Employees are fundamentally motivated to do their job, and if you empower them to make more decisions without needing to consult you, then they do their job more efficiently and provide better customer satisfaction.
Both of these theories are valid, and both are used, though which one is used depends on the particular job and the particular employees that you hire. UPS for example is all about strict time management, so they have policy governing almost every small action you make, including how precisely you'll hold your keys, and for that it makes sense.
Customer service jobs, especially like those of retail workers, tend to benefit more from an empowerment model where they're allowed to make decisions on behalf of the company without the need to consult their manager. Then there are office workers who tend to have much more specialized roles where salaries and benefits are competitive, who not only need empowerment to do their job, but are probably less inclined to work for a given employer if the work environment sucks. Managers of said employees probably don't want this kind of thing because they wouldn't want to lose any of their talent.
That said, if you work in such a job role, it's unlikely you'd ever see anything like this. Though if you worked as a janitor or something, you may very well see this.
I keep preaching every chance I get, and M$ fans keep acting like they'll always have choices when the reality is you won't, unless you want to switch to a better OS. ;)
When it comes to management, there are generally two schools of thought:
1) Employees are fundamentally lazy and require constant supervision for maximum productivity 2) Employees are fundamentally motivated to do their job, and if you empower them to make more decisions without needing to consult you, then they do their job more efficiently and provide better customer satisfaction.
Both of these theories are valid, and both are used, though which one is used depends on the particular job and the particular employees that you hire.
The problem is basically every office consists of a mix of those people. I am mostly in the first category yet my office is generally managed on the second principle and there are those people here. I guess it works to a degree because I'm motivated enough not to get hassled and I do all work assigned to me and don't miss deadlines but on the other hand I could do my work a lot better and quicker if I could be bothered or should I say motivated properly.
Wanna buy a shirt?
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An OS family is defined by its API (at least by sane people). So Linux is part of the UNIX family, and so is, for example, QNX. You do not have to like that, but you do not get to decide what reality is. I am well aware that Linux is not a UNIX as it does not share kernel-code with either SYS V or BSD. It is however UNIX-like and that makes it part of the family.
Fundamentalists like you harm everybody, including yourself. Please go away.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
And other situations where you'd want better control over your meat-bots, like fast food. Did employee #215346 wash their hands for the proper amount of time before returning to the food assembly line? Did they drop food on the floor and then serve it anyway?
Actually, this technology makes a lot of sense. Total enforcement of corporate policy with fewer middle managers needed for a large work force. It's not like the peasant scum won't still scramble over themselves for any job they can get, at least the ones that haven't been replaced by a robot yet.
nobody else was paying much attention to them. This is one of the reasons why many projects end up taking longer than estimated, costing more, and require renovations.
Am I the only one who works LESS when I know I am being observed. If I work in a location with a camera on me, I find it hard to concentrate, even when I am unsure if someone is watching. The idea of being watched at all times makes me mentally observe myself through the eyes of the observer (I think). I become self conscious, which consumes my time and reduces productivity.
First thing I do at my new office computer is tape over all cameras, remove speakers, headsets and microphones.
Am I paranoid to think that being observed all the time is creepy? And am I a bad worker for having reduced output when a creep is nearby and focused on me?