An offshore workforce is training Amazon’s warehouse-monitoring algorithms (published in partnership with TBIJ)
This report is published in partnership with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
The videos are reviewed by workers like Viraj in Bengaluru, India. “It is very hectic work,” he said. “We shouldn’t blink our eyes while reviewing a video because our accuracy will go less. We have to be on screen at least eight hours — which is kind of painful.” The Bureau interviewed 33 current and former Amazon employees, including 21 video reviewers, to shed light on a little-known outpost of Amazon’s sprawling global operations.
Most crucially, though, their nonstop manual work helps to improve the computer vision system, which learns from their responses and becomes more and more accurate. But the people teaching Amazon’s computers to see said their own eyes have been damaged by the work. It was an Amazon break room, with chairs set out, very similar to the one in his own building. It gave him an uncanny sense of being observed. “Probably someone else, somewhere else, was watching me at the moment I was watching them,” he said.
Jiyan, another former reviewer based in India, said that while the targets were manageable, the work was still “stressful.” What bothered him most, though, was the monotony. “It’s a very boring job,” he said. “The entire day, for seven and a half hours, you’re doing the same thing over and over again. There is nothing new.”
But Naomi, who worked at the warehouse at the time, found it difficult to adjust. “It was just quite nitpicky — the way you had to stand, the way you had to move,” she said. “You couldn’t really have your own freedom in the way you did things.”To maximize the computer’s chance of success, stowers were told to ensure they were in view of the camera and to use “clean and straight movements” when putting an item away. In cases where the system failed, footage was sent to video reviewers to verify.
Isaac, a former stower at a Michigan warehouse, received a write-up after accumulating around four minutes of time off task. He was feeling unwell and went to get some medication and use the bathroom at the end of his break. Despite explaining this to a manager, he still received a written warning. Workers in US warehouses saw themselves displayed on large screens with a six-foot green circle around their feet. If they got too close to a colleague, the ring would turn red. In cases where the computer was unsure how close they were, images were sent abroad for additional checks.
He also recommended screen breaks every 20 to 30 minutes. But some workers interviewed by the Bureau felt it was difficult or impossible to take breaks outside of their allotted times. Amazon Go’s marketing trades heavily on the futuristic novelty of an unstaffed store. But in reality, the role of shop assistant has simply been outsourced to video reviewers in India.
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