Communications of the ACM
Fired by Bot at Amazon: 'It's You Against the Machine'
Contract drivers say algorithms terminate them by email, even when they have done nothing wrong.
Credit: zephyrnet.com
Stephen Normandin spent almost four years racing around Phoenix delivering packages as a contract driver for Amazon.com Inc. Then one day, he received an automated email. The algorithms tracking him had decided he wasn't doing his job properly.
The 63-year-old Army veteran was stunned. He'd been fired by a machine.
Normandin says Amazon punished him for things beyond his control that prevented him from completing his deliveries, such as locked apartment complexes. He said he took the termination hard and, priding himself on a strong work ethic, recalled that during his military career he helped cook for 250,000 Vietnamese refugees at Fort Chaffee in Arkansas.
From Bloomberg
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