Rebecca Ackermann
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rebackermann.bsky.social
Rebecca Ackermann
@rebackermann.bsky.social
410 followers 320 following 37 posts
Writing about art, culture & tech for MIT Tech Review, Vox, Esquire & more | I have eclectic interests
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rebackermann.bsky.social
For @technologyreview.com I wrote about how the names we give generative machines really matter.
The rapid proliferation of AI in our lives introduces new challenges around authorship, authenticity, and ethics i. Work and art. How can we make sense of these machines, not just use them?
April 14, 2025 at 5:06 PM
rebackermann.bsky.social
Automated firing systems? El*n hardly invented the approach that many companies are already employing.
Yet this line of thinking is hardly unique to Amazon, although the company could be seen as a pioneer in the datafication of work. (An investigation found that over one year between 2017 and 2018, the company fired hundreds of workers at a single facility—by means of automatically generated letters—for not meeting productivity quotas.)
February 25, 2025 at 9:04 PM
rebackermann.bsky.social
But the report goes on to reveal that in 2022, another team at Amazon, called Core AI, also evaluated warehouse safety and concluded that unrealistic pacing wasn’t the reason all those workers were getting hurt on the job. Core AI said that the cause, instead, was workers’ “frailty” and “intrinsic likelihood of injury.” The issue was the limitations of the human bodies the company was measuring, not the pressures it was subjecting those bodies to. Amazon stood by this reasoning during the congressional investigation.
February 25, 2025 at 4:47 PM
rebackermann.bsky.social
What happens when workers are reduced to productivity metrics? I wrote about surveillance tech & the datafication of work for @technologyreview.com
February 24, 2025 at 9:11 PM
rebackermann.bsky.social
Always amazing to see the words in print! ✨ Thank you @kenyonreview.bsky.social ❤️
September 23, 2023 at 3:56 PM