Inside the Tech Industry’s Newest Metric: Workers Forced to Prove Productivity by Burning AI Credits |
Inside the Tech Industry’s Newest Metric: Workers Forced to Prove Productivity by Burning AI Credits
Forcing workers to use AI, and rating their workplace performance on AI use, can easily go wrong.
BY KIT EATON @KITEATON
Illustration: Getty Images
In the race to embed AI into pretty much every corner of business, are some companies going too far, too fast, and putting too much pressure on their workers? A report about Amazon’s embrace of AI suggests yes. Meanwhile, CEOs of other tech companies are turning to a new and unusual measure of employee performance: How many AI use credits they burn through per day. The theory here is the more the better, because executives are looking for the much-hyped productivity boosts that AI promises. All of this news may prompt you to think about your own company’s AI deployment—possibly framed as a “don’t do it like this” lesson.
Amazon, which is a technology company just as much as a global-spanning e-retailer, is pressing hard for its workers to use AI. Over half a dozen current and former Amazing staffers........