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posted by chromas on Wednesday May 02 2018, @11:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the thx-1138 dept.

'Forget the Facebook leak': China is mining data directly from workers' brains on an industrial scale

But there's one big difference – the workers wear caps to monitor their brainwaves, data that management then uses to adjust the pace of production and redesign workflows, according to the company.

The company said it could increase the overall efficiency of the workers by manipulating the frequency and length of break times to reduce mental stress.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 02 2018, @01:53PM (7 children)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday May 02 2018, @01:53PM (#674556)

    This is pretty interesting stuff, and really shows how different the Chinese approach is to the American approach.

    Apparently, in China, they seek to minimize worker stress so as to increase efficiency and reduce costly mistakes. That seems to be a sensible goal if your objective is maximizing long-term profit.

    In America, however, it seems that the goal is to maximize worker stress, for what end goal, I'm not sure. We can see this through things like the wholesale adoption of the open-plan office, and the way Amazon is reported to treat their workers.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @02:23PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @02:23PM (#674572)

    Apparently, in China, they seek to minimize worker stress so as to increase efficiency and reduce costly mistakes.

    Haha, don't drink too much of the koolaid. China isn't exactly the bastion of worker rights...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @03:32PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @03:32PM (#674606)

    The American way is for waste people to be dumped outside cities and kept on disability and drugs.
    China isn't that developed yet. Their waste workers tend to hang out in the cities looking for something to do. The government doesn't want that to be revolution.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @04:33PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @04:33PM (#674639)

    In America, worker stress is maximized to increase worker burnout and force employee churn, which helps prevent accumulation of seniority and the benefits thereof, like increased pay, vacation time, ect.
    (This is for any job with sufficiently low/cheap training time and cost of failure.)
    This new approach in China will likely lead to more forced, unpaid time off and firings than anything else... or a market for unstressed people to wear sensors for others and fake sensors for the workers, whichever is easier.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @10:40PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @10:40PM (#674805)

      Only for low value jobs.

  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday May 02 2018, @04:35PM (2 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 02 2018, @04:35PM (#674644) Journal

    So do you normally believe the justifications issued by politicians and corporate spokesmen? You might want to reconsider such an approach.

    What *is* interesting is that he appears to expect people to accept his statement at face value. This, however, could easily be an artifact of translation or paraphrasing.

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 02 2018, @04:55PM (1 child)

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday May 02 2018, @04:55PM (#674656)

      No, I don't believe them, however, let's forget about that, and let's assume that these corporate spokespeople are all being completely honest. This guy talks about decreasing workers' mental stress. When do American corporate spokespeople ever talk about that? Never. Instead, they laud the open-office concept because of "collaboration!!!". I've never heard American corporate spokespeople ever say anything about decreasing the stress of their workers. So even if you do believe they're all lying, the Americans aren't even trying to get you to believe they care about it. Surely you don't believe, then, that decreasing mental stress is actually some kind of secret goal of theirs.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @10:47PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @10:47PM (#674809)

        Some people actually seek out situations which may appear stressful to others. I have always sought out high stress positions as they pay more and the stress does not bother me as long as I know I am doing my best work that I can.