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. From a report: Stephen Normandin spent almost four years racing around Phoenix delivering packages as a contract driver for Amazon.com. 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. 'I'm an old-school kind of guy, and I give every job 110%,' he said. 'This really upset me because we're talking about my reputation. They say I didn't do the job when I know damn well I did.' Normandin's experience is a twist on the decades-old prediction that robots will replace workers. At Amazon, machines are often the boss -- hiring, rating and firing millions of people with little or no human oversight.

Amazon became the world's largest online retailer in part by outsourcing its sprawling operations to algorithms -- sets of computer instructions designed to solve specific problems. For years, the company has used algorithms to manage the millions of third-party merchants on its online marketplace, drawing complaints that sellers have been booted off after being falsely accused of selling counterfeit goods and jacking up prices. Increasingly, the company is ceding its human-resources operation to machines as well, using software not only to manage workers in its warehouses but to oversee contract drivers, independent delivery companies and even the performance of its office workers. People familiar with the strategy say Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos believes machines make decisions more quickly and accurately than people, reducing costs and giving Amazon a competitive advantage.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.