MPs: Monitoring performance with AI must be regulated
Performance monitoring damages workers' mental health, MPs have warned
The use of artificial intelligence AI technology to monitor workers' performance is damaging their mental health and needs to be controlled with new legislation, a new report by the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on the future of work has suggested.
The report - titled The New Frontier: Artificial Intelligence at Work - focuses on the future of work in the UK. It recommends introducing a new 'accountability for algorithms act' to establish a clear direction that would ensure organisations using AI algorithms prioritise the well-being of workers over profits.
'Pervasive monitoring and target-setting technologies, in particular, are associated with pronounced negative impacts on mental and physical wellbeing as workers experience the extreme pressure of constant, real-time micro-management and automated assessment,' MPs and peers noted in the report, according to The Guardian.
They also warned that the use of algorithms in setting performance targets is producing a sense of unfairness and lack of independence among workers.
The MPs highlighted the significance of legislation on this issue, saying it would give workers the right to be involved in the design and use of algorithm-driven systems that are deployed to make decisions about fundamental aspects of someone's work.
"Our inquiry reveals how AI technologies have spread beyond the gig economy to control what, who and how work is done," said David Davis MP, the Conservative chair of the APPG.
Clive Lewis, a Labour member of the Group, said the report explains why the government needs to bring forward robust proposals for AI regulation.
"There are marked gaps in regulation at an individual and corporate level that are damaging people and communities right across the country," he added.
All-party parliamentary groups are informal cross-party groups. They have no official status in Parliament, but act to bring together MPs and stakeholders.
The APPG inquiry was ordered after the publication of a report by the Institute for the Future of Work (IFoW) in May this year, which examined the role of algorithm-driven systems in modern work.
Entitled The Amazonian Era, the report included testimony from delivery drivers and checkout workers who said AI systems were causing them high levels of anxiety.
Some manufacturing workers told researchers that they had to log 95 per cent of their activity on shifts, so their working day could be planned more intensively.
In 2019, it emerged that Amazon uses an automated employee-tracking system at its fulfilment centres that not only automatically evaluates worker productivity, but also terminates the employment of staff who fail to meet certain standards - without consulting a human supervisor.
Amazon's employee-tracking system uses a metric dubbed 'time-off task' to determine how long employees take to perform jobs like tracking orders, packing and sorting packages, and so on. If the system finds their productivity is not up to a certain standard, it issues automated warnings and can also fire them.
Amazon fired more than 300 full-time employees at its Baltimore facility from August 2017 through September 2018 for productivity reasons - a figure representing about 10 per cent of the overall workforce.
Earlier this year, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) warned that there were big gaps in UK employment law over the use of AI at work.
The TUC said new legal protections were needed as workers could be "hired and fired by algorithm".
"AI at work could be used to improve productivity and working lives. But it is already being used to make life-changing decisions about people at work - like who gets hired and fired," TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady told the BBC.
"Without fair rules, the use of AI at work could lead to widespread discrimination and unfair treatment - especially for those in insecure work and the gig economy," she warned.