Why You Might Soon Be Paid Like an Uber Driver—Even If You’re Not One

https://slate.com/technology/2024/10/uber-lyft-gig-workers-artificial-intelligence-wage-discrimination-jobs.html

16 Comments

  1. This type of shit needs to be treated like Realpage.

    Show your work – otherwise, lawsuits, lawsuits, lawsuits.

  2. >Algorithms can be employed to sniff out desperation for income based on the extremes people are willing to take on the job

    This is some truly dystopian level shit.

  3. The gig apps need to be profitable for them to be a long-term thing. Right now they burn investor cash to stay afloat. Generally the plan is to get enough marketshare to become profitable through making it cost more to use or sell the business to a larger company.

    Then there are the lawsuits involved in what counts as employee. Also people ditching them on both sides over it not being worth it. Governments might also crackdown on the companies doing shady things with illegal workers or other violations of the law.

  4. smurfseverywhere on

    This is rationale and to be expected from companies.

    It’s not on companies to regulate themselves. Washington needs to get involved.

  5. The only thing honest about the tech industry is their priority to “disrupt” industries, but they don’t have anything better to replace them with. Just their own profit for greed and ways to skirt around the legal system to rip people off.

  6. Or maybe you should stop being luddites and adapt to new technology. Y’all blamed boomers for not adapting. Now you’re the boomers.

  7. CuriousNebula43 on

    This is AI fear mongering.

    AI isn’t the issue here, data analytics is. Plenty of us in the industry have been concerned about what’s possible in a future with exponentially increasing data analytics.

    You already see it in the car insurance market. Insurance made sense to average out risks in a population because you couldn’t know who would be involved in an accident. With increasing analytics, that gap is closing and insurance companies are better equipped to target high risk drivers. And there’s not a lot of sympathy for the argument that higher risk drivers shouldn’t pay more, even if it comes with the cost of Orwellian monitoring software from the insurance industry.

    It’ll be an interesting world where it’s possible to collect analytics on absolutely everything everyone does every single day and throw algorithms at it. Interesting and scary.

  8. Monopolies extract all consumer surplus.

    Monopsonies extract all producer surplus.

    These pricing schemes are the result of monopoly power exercised in non-competitive markets.

  9. As a 4.99 star driver with 3906 career trips, here are some things I don’t see brought up enough:

    The ‘be your own company’ narrative is flawed and it’s not always the gig company’s fault. You’re simply not a business owner in the eyes of other businesses. Nor do you get the benefits of running the company policy, setting the price, advertising more, or using your income to qualify for loans. I’ve nearly been screwed out of proof of income forms for apartments (let alone house loans) because a lot of banks don’t recognize gig income as real income.

    Gig work has also destroyed the one good thing the economy used to be based on even at the worst job: time is money. because it’s paid by each task, you are absorbing the slow days and not the business owner. Counter to intuition the more hours you work the less you will make per hour. It’s decent for a few busy evening hours but I’ve seen people treat this as a 40h a week career and I guarantee half of them are making less than minimum wage once costs are subtracted. As for tips, I make 14%. It makes a huge difference but it is still probably less than you would think.

  10. It always makes me sad when I ponder the reality that the absolute brightest minds and best technology in the world in the history of humanity has the sole goal of extracting more dollars from your pocket.

    Imagine if there had been an alternative world where all that energy was focused on improving humanity.

  11. Americans who vote conservative enable less worker protections, more corporate control over every part of their lives, and less government support for people. They are directly voting for the bleakest dystopian future.