Online retailing giant Amazon's Flex contract drivers say their jobs are at the mercy of software that can unfairly rate their performance. Algorithms mine data on performance patterns and assign drivers routes, or deactivate them, with little human feedback. One source says the Flex algorithms do not account for human nature, setting up good drivers for failure. A former engineer who helped design Flex says Amazon believes the program's benefits offset the collateral damage; a former manager says the company knew the software would lead to errors and bad press, but felt addressing such issues was unnecessarily expensive, as long as drivers could easily be replaced.

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Prof. Enrico Nardelli
Dipartimento di Matematica - Universita' di Roma "Tor Vergata"
Via della Ricerca Scientifica snc - 00133 Roma
tel: +39 06 7259.4204    fax: +39 06 7259.4699
mobile: +39 335 590.2331     e-mail: nardelli@mat.uniroma2.it
home page: http://www.mat.uniroma2.it/~nardelli
blog: http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/blog/enardelli/
      http://link-and-think.blogspot.it/
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