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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday April 21 2015, @04:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the luddites-r-us dept.

Zeynep Tufekci writes in an op-ed at the NYT that machines can now process regular spoken language and not only recognize human faces, but also read their expressions. Machines can classify personality types, and have started being able to carry out conversations with appropriate emotional tenor. Machines are getting better than humans at figuring out who to hire, who’s in a mood to pay a little more for that sweater, and who needs a coupon to nudge them toward a sale. It turns out that most of what we think of as expertise, knowledge and intuition is being de-constructed and recreated as an algorithmic competency, fueled by big data. "Machines aren’t used because they perform some tasks that much better than humans, but because, in many cases, they do a “good enough” job while also being cheaper, more predictable and easier to control than quirky, pesky humans," writes Tufekci. "Technology in the workplace is as much about power and control as it is about productivity and efficiency."

According to Tufekci technology is being used in many workplaces: to reduce the power of humans, and employers’ dependency on them, whether by replacing, displacing or surveilling them. Optimists insist that we’ve been here before, during the Industrial Revolution, when machinery replaced manual labor, and all we need is a little more education and better skills but Tufekci says that one historical example is no guarantee of future events. "Confronting the threat posed by machines, and the way in which the great data harvest has made them ever more able to compete with human workers, must be about our priorities," concludes Tufekci. "This problem is not us versus the machines, but between us, as humans, and how we value one another."

 
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday April 21 2015, @11:53AM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 21 2015, @11:53AM (#173489)

    WRT fighting, its neo-feudalism with stratified social classes and all the wealth at the top. At mega corporations like where I work we're all gladiators, all we do is fight other teams and other divisions for the amusement of the higher up social classes, almost no labor goes into customer focused stuff or fighting our competitors or even being generally productive. Its going to be a world of a couple giant corporations holding virtual internal gladiatorial combat all the time. We're already there in many ways.

    WRT the quote:

    "Technology in the workplace is as much about power and control as it is about productivity and efficiency."

    for sociopath / psychopath types which we select for positions of power, executing primate dominance rituals against an iPad is not as emotionally satisfying as making living breathing humans suffer. Aside from the lunatics who lead us, having humans do work is ALREADY a 1%er form of conspicuous consumption. Donno if we can "keep the economy rollin" on handmade food and clothes for the hyperrich but its at least something, and extending that idea to the office for white collar ditch digging isn't too unrealistic. So rich dude wants to show off how rich he is and Quicken would do the job cheaper than the human accountant, well, trying to show off your wealth by not spending it is like fighting for peace or having sex for virginity.

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  • (Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Thursday April 23 2015, @07:21PM

    by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 23 2015, @07:21PM (#174403) Journal

    Things is despite all the insightful comments in this thread and elsewhere there's no shortage of work that could or should be done, only a shortage of jobs. Infrastructure is one glaring example.

    --
    Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))