Amazon’s use of AI and robotics in its warehouses isolates workers and negatively impacts union organizing drives, a new report finds.
The report, conducted by Oxford University research team Fairwork and the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, aimed to explain how AI impacts warehouse workers by interviewing employees at robotic Amazon warehouses in the U.K.
“Studies so far look at AI deployment and integration as specific technologies and how they impact labor conditions,” said Funda Ustek Spilda, a senior researcher and project manager at Fairwork and the report’s lead author. “However, we're showing that it's a really holistic system. Even the areas where you might perhaps not think that AI is having any important impact are getting impacted, such as contracts or representation of workers, where workers are feeling a lot more isolated. It is really a more holistic impact of AI rather than specific technologies that are being introduced.”