The White House Is Probing How Companies Use AI to Surveil and Manage Workers

(Bloomberg) -- The White House is probing how companies use artificial intelligence to monitor and manage workers, practices the Biden Administration says are increasingly prevalent and can inflict significant harm.

“While these technologies can benefit both workers and employers in some cases, they can also create serious risks to workers,” deputies from the White House Domestic Policy Council and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy wrote in a blog post slated for publication later Monday, announcing a formal request for information from the public about how automated tools are being deployed in the workplace.

“The constant tracking of performance can push workers to move too fast on the job, posing risks to their safety and mental health,” wrote the officials, Deputy Assistant to the President for Racial Justice and Equity Jenny Yang, and Deputy US Chief Technology Officer Deirdre Mulligan. In addition, they wrote, using tech to monitor workers’ conversations can deter them from exercising their right to organize, and AI can fuel discrimination in pay and discipline.

Lawmakers and advocates around the country have been turning increasing attention to how companies use tech to control their workforces. Last week, the Minnesota state house passed a bill that would require companies such as Amazon.com Inc. to provide warehouse workers with copies of data they collected on their pace of work. California and New York have passed similar legislation regulating warehouse productivity quotas in the past couple of years.

Related:Don’t Spy on Employees to Ensure They’re Working, Microsoft Says

The White House’s forthcoming request for information, reviewed by Bloomberg, cites media reports on the ways surveillance technology has been deployed in sectors throughout the US economy. Among the uses: monitoring truckers’ eye movements; documenting the speed at which fast-food workers prepare meals; assessing the emotional state of customers while on the phone with call-center staff; tracking the movements of nurses via radio frequency identification tags in their ID badges; taking automated screenshots of copywriters’ computers.

The request seeks input from workers, employers, developers, researchers and advocacy groups regarding the uses and effects of workplace surveillance tech, including “economic, safety, physical, mental and emotional impacts.” The administration also wants to know what regulations, enforcement activity or other strategies the government should explore to address them. The document makes clear that its inquiry covers gig workers classified as “independent contractors,” as well as traditional employees.

In a letter last year, US Senator Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, urged the federal Labor Department to start regulating “the largely unchecked spread of invasive and exploitative workplace surveillance and technologies.” Casey cited news reports including a 2021 Bloomberg article detailing complaints from Amazon contract delivery drivers, who said performance-tracking algorithms unfairly penalized and even terminated them while ignoring real-world hurdles such as traffic jams and locked apartment complexes. (Amazon said their experiences were unrepresentative and that all appeals from drivers are investigated. The company also has said that it uses "safe and achievable expectations" to assess warehouse workers’ performance.)

In their forthcoming blog post, Yang and Mulligan wrote that gathering information on surveillance and monitoring technology would help promote “fair and equitable workplaces,” advance racial equity and ensure “workers are treated with respect and dignity, and have the opportunity to form and join unions.”