New roles, without bosses
How do things work when people are managed by algorithms, against current human beings? Likely, the work is chopped into microtaska. At this time, managed algorithmic works tend to be contract roles or concerts. But the day may come to which full-time jobs will be instructed, to some extent, from algorithms-to better or for worse. Can people do the work without direct supervision by living human bosses?
This is a question that has been studied by Lindsey Cameron, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The lack of direct human supervision can be free, and at the same time, disappointing for the workers, she explained in a recent interview published by Knowledge@Wharton.
“There is this joy in the flexibility of the schedule, and then there is this issue when things do not go properly – whether salary, something with a client, or not take trips. Then you are talking to a robot and it is difficult to get a solution.”
The best case of using algorithm management is working on fraud applications such as Uber or Lyft, who use software to manage their contract executives. Workers enjoy the flexibility that the application offers, but at the same time, they can be “punished” – starting from the app for several days, due to a bad assessment by a client. There is no one to appeal such decisions made by machinery.
After all, algorithm management can extend its achievement beyond the work of concerts, Cameron said. The usual denominator is that the algorithm management slices work on the smaller possible units or microtasks – a process known as deskilling, which has been the essential practice seen in mounting lines for more than a century. In addition to the microtas they get the fungus more granular than the mounting lines.
Ridshare is built on many microtascus, Cameron said. Workers make Microtask Decisions from Microtask, such as, “Will I accept this trip or not? Will I follow GPS, Uber or Waze’s, to go where I go? Will I talk to the client? What way do I drive? And then do I appreciate or not? ‘”
These movements are all very small ingredients of a task, and since they are so small, “they can be managed algorithically,” Cameron said. “And at the same time, workers feel like they have choices. Because there are all these small individual elements, I have a very small but very real choice.
One danger with the desk and the penetration of the work is that it can reduce wages, as “people cannot really build skills,” she warned. “And the algorithms make mistakes. Without a man in the loop, man is lost.”
The problem is “people keep these algorithms in the status of God, which they cannot make a mistake,” she continued. “There will always be a gap between the way technology is created, and how it is used and implemented by workers. And in that space, you see agencies, but you also see mistakes the technical system is making.
Cameron added that she worked part -time as a Uber driver for three years. “I have never spoken to a single Uber employee. Employment, firing, evaluation, discipline, were all done by an algorithm management system. And it really gives us a precursor or a picture for the future.”
The result of having workers who are being managed algorithically, microtask by Microtask, calls for a rethinking of the way organizations are structured. “Because this is not Walmart. But it is not really a gang of free navigation consultants meeting through a work board. It is a new organizational form and has some responsibilities and obligations in the game. “