Watched Work

This story about real-time monitoring of people in the workplace sounds like truly hellish.

"If performance targets are being fine-tuned by AI and your progress towards them being measured by AI, that will only multiply the pressure," said labor and globalization professor Ursula Huws of the University of Hertfordshire. "People are deemed not to be working if they take their hands off the keyboard for five minutes. But they could be thinking, and that doesn’t get measured. What is this doing for innovation, which needs creative workers?"

I am sure it would not be too hard to program a bot that clicks way at the computer following a recipe while the worker plays Bejewled on their phone. This is all around creepy, counter-productive and an idea with not a single redeeming value. Yet, it is being used quite a bit. For some people, it may be just impossible to function knowing that their every keystroke is being measured and monitored. 

This is not a lot different than having spy-cams in your bedroom broadcasting to the world. If a person is assigned a task and it is getting done on time and with quality there is no sense in finding out how they spent their time. If such is not the case, monitoring how many cat videos they watched instead of working on their assignment does not help at all. It does not answer the question - so what?