How Walmart, Delta, Chevron and Starbucks are using AI to monitor employee messages
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Aware uses AI to analyze companies' employee messages across Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom and other communications services.

Walmart, Delta, Chevron and Starbucks are using AI to monitor employee messages::Aware uses AI to analyze companies’ employee messages across Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom and other communications services.

  • TootSweet@lemmy.worldEnglish
    26·
    2 years ago

    There’s going to be an article one of these days in Business Insider or something saying “employees increasingly establishing secret outside-of-the-company communication channels and sharing trade secrets over them.” And then the companies are going to get all pissy about “muh trade secritssssss” and issue nagging emails to the whole company not to set up Discords to evade their employee monitoring solution that they pay a gorillion dollars a year for. And because it was the CEO’s idea, he can’t just back down and admit it was wrong. He has to keep doubling down.

    Meme format of Principle Skinner from The Simpsons reflecting in the first panel "Am I so out of touch?" and in the second panel saying "No, it's the employees who are wrong."

    • JDubbleu@programming.devEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      This is already a thing. I’m part of a 25k person Discord server for Amazon/AWS employees both current and former. We often discussed a ton about the company’s inner workings, navigating the toxic AF environment, and helping people find other jobs. Nothing ever trade secret level, but that Discord would give any competitor a massive leg up in direct competition with Amazon.

  • Asidonhopo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    18·
    2 years ago

    A lot of retailers are replacing their standard phone systems with products from Zoom and other AI transcription enabled providers. In environments with audio recording, its reasonable to assume that relatively soon, full transcripts of conversations identified to individual speakers will be easily obtained, summarized and analyzed by AI. This will hopefully soon come under scrutiny for violating both two- and one-party consent laws for audio recording.

    • Billiam@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      2 years ago

      In a two-party-consent state, maybe.

      But in a one-party-consent state, all that Personnel Human Resources People Ops will do is point to a clause in your onboarding paperwork where you agreed to be recorded while on company property using company telephony equipment as a condition of your employment.

      • Asidonhopo@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        2 years ago

        As long as that’s in the employee paperwork it protects companies from some liability, but what about customer-employee or customer-customer conversations picked up by the system? I suppose a sign stating that video and audio conversations being recorded would further lessen employer liability but I imagine in the future laws about AI technology used on those convos will be put in place and the use of surreptious AI conversation analytics in retail environments will be more regulated. For now though it sure seems like a free for all and I wouldn’t be surprised at unethical use becoming somewhat common.

  • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    16·
    2 years ago

    You only communicate over company channels what you don’t mind appearing in the court room. They was already the case, now it’s just more so.

  • Adalast@lemmy.worldEnglish
    81·
    2 years ago

    If you own it, don’t install a damn thing your employer demands. If they want security access on a device, they pay for it.

    If you don’t own it, don’t use it for a damn thing that isn’t work-related and use it minimally for that. “Yes sir” emails and submitting reports. That’s it. Don’t do research, don’t surf the web, don’t accept a single personal call, email, or text. They don’t have any right to know anything that is not work related.