Thread by @katecrawford

Whoa... looks like our Anatomy of AI research spawned some viral news. A bunch of stories focused on the ‘worker cage’ patent. So here’s some context:

The Amazon cage thing is not new. The patent was filed in 2013, granted in ‘16. We dug it up in our research on all the patents that went into the Amazon Echo. You can search them too – USPTO has 'em on a public site. Here’s the cage patent:
pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?Docid=092…

The worker cage never got made. Instead, Amazon execs say they decided to make employees wear vests covered in sensors so they don’t get run over by robots. Ohhhhkay...

Vest or cage, there’s a bigger point here. It's about the future of work in an algorithmically-organized space, be it a warehouse, a car or behind a screen. And it ain’t pretty.
Eg: businessinsider.com/amazon-deliver…
motherjones.com/politics/2012/…

So human workers are increasingly being surveilled and exploited inside systems of data capture and global natural resource extraction. We need to consider the wider context if we are ever going to get governance and regulation right.

And that’s the aim of the Anatomy of AI map and essay: to trace an outline of the bigger picture. 🗺️ anatomyof.ai