College Writing R4B

Final Research

Carmen Butcher

6 December 2021

Final Research Portfolio - INTENSIVE RESEARCH (weebly.com)

The Subordinate Human Workers in Industry 4.0:

How Automation Displaces Low-Skilled Workers in the U.S.

Abstract

The fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) is expected to impact the labor

market in more dramatic ways after the COVID-19 pandemic surges in the U.S.. Tech-

capitalists actively seek rescue from decreasing productivity, higher wages, more costly

health programs and social demands in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automation. This

research opens up grounds of discussion of automation’s impacts on low-skilled workers:

their future displacement and unemployment risks, their present and future wage levels,

their job benefits, their work satisfaction, their job relations with machines, and their

adaptations to changes. To give a holistic view of the automation process in certain fields,

the research provides case studies of Amazon’s warehouse interviews and conference with

Fed-Ex’s CEO on automation as well as United States Bureau of Labor’s statistical

analyses. The research seeks to find a solution for low-skilled workers to adapt to the

changing working environments in warehouses and minimize social instability as a result of

massive automation.
Key Words: AI, Automation, Skill Gap, Work Satisfaction, Work Relationship,

Unemployment, Work Environment.

I. Introduction

German professor and artificial intelligence (AI) researcher Wolfgang Wahlster

introduced the term “Industry 4.0” at the 2011 Hannover Fair to “promote the

computerization of manufacturing”. In simplified terms, “Industry 4.0” generically names

the combination of the most recent new technologies, operation systems and business

ideals to guide future industry developments.

As Adrian Dima, the co-founder and CTO of Kfactory, describes on her blog, there

are four design principles on which the concept of Industry 4.0 is based that current

entrepreneurs and tech experts have agreed upon:

Interconnection — the ability of machines, devices, sensors, and people to connect and

communicate with each other via the Internet of things, or the internet of people (IoP)

Information transparency — the transparency afforded by Industry 4.0 technology

provides operators with comprehensive information to make decisions. 

Technical assistance — the technological facility of systems to assist humans in

decision-making and problem-solving, and the ability to help humans with difficult or unsafe

tasks

Decentralized decisions — the ability of cyber physical systems to make decisions on

their own and to perform their tasks as autonomously as possible.  

 Industries embraced this concept and applied them as guided principles for product

designing, marketing, conceptualizing visions, etc. after the Hannover Fair. The

revolution centers around the supply chain, integrating new technologies such as

augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) into daily production and operational

level decision making.

Numerous application scenarios have incorporated even more technologies that

neither researchers nor industry leaders could possibly tell whether or not a specific

technology has operated behind each individual project on the market. Study from

Rüßmann et.al critically evaluates nine major technologies of Industry 4.0 (Appendix A).

More technologies remain undiscussed, showcasing the complexity nature of Industry

4.0’s revolutionary force to society in general.

The discussions for industrial applications of disruptive technologies constituting

Industry 4.0 have become so heated among scholars and business leaders during recent

years. Sarvari et al. introduced in academic literature practical methods to design

potential roadmaps for an arbitrary company to develop “new product and process

development phases” that pushes the Efficient Frontier Curve (Appendix B) outward as

soon as they fully embrace these changes.

II. Blending Capital with AI: the “Invisible Revolution” and Capitalists’ View of

Industry 4.0

The aforementioned technologies may seem futuristic but yet simultaneously

ambiguous because under no circumstances would a company restrict its own

development trajectory by specifying the application scenarios. If the company’s “C-

suite” estimates that they could theoretically touch upon any other technology in the

future, they would likely depict a splendid scenario involving that technology, build a

substandard prototype (or minimum viable product, whichever faster to build) and claim

that it has out competed its competitors. In reality, major tech companies who are

supposed to make progress benefiting the public have kept beating around the bushes

during the most recent years, introducing one concept after another, categorizing them

under the “Industry 4.0”, without presenting satisfactory products applicable to day-to-

day demands. The main focus of innovation has been geared towards creating “a new

norm” where the customers are educated of the use scenario of a product and then buy it

based on the belief that they would be leading the trend. Unsurprisingly, as the market

has gradually adapted to the marketing strategies boasting about a concept instead of the

products themselves, and that the investors learnt through pain that the tech companies

have stopped making innovation (by the conventional definition) and lying about the

progress, the “draw a large cake and then cash out” method doesn’t play out as well as

before. If so, do advanced technologies help introduce groundbreaking social changes by

stacking up the concepts without really upgrading itself? Neither is that the case. The

reality lies somewhere in the middle ground: the path of progress seems to be an

ascending spiral, except that now these technologies seem to have backfired and yielded a

negative social impact severely damaging the current work dynamics in the labor market.

AI plays an undeniably important and irreplaceable role reforming facets in

modern industries to boost productivity through introducing means of production that

have largely reduced unnecessarily repetitive works and have continuously brought job

positions that encourage creativity and increase job satisfaction to the market since its
creation. According to the President and CEO of FedEx, Raj Subramaniam, shipping

companies including UPS, DHL and FedEx have integrated AI and Machine Learning

into the day to day operating and marketing initiatives and as an inseparable part of their

business models. Raj described at a conference at the Haas School of Business, Berkeley

on 10th November, 2021, titling “Supply Chain Innovation at FedEx” that even though

during early development FedEx was established on technical basis and human labor-

intensive sectors expanded above that, during recent years the company has experienced

a transition to a more inverted structure, with data scientists, researchers and business

leaders utilizing the abundant data collected from devices on company-owned vehicles

and warehouses to offer smart solutions. “It is essential for us to heavily invest in the

automation sectors and accommodate them to our business sectors instead of the more

conventional human sectors.” Raj explains. A significant end result would be the

accelerated expansion of the company and the improved productivity of the company as a

whole: FedEx spent 27 years raising 20 billion dollars of investment, but the most recent

20 billion dollars were raised in less than 18 months.

However, from the business leaders’ perspectives, AIs are not the magic pill that

leads to success with no consequences. As the competitions between tech companies heat

up, managers too constantly struggle between preserving the traditional work culture and

introducing possibilities to workspaces via AI and robotics. New issues have kept up with

the pace of Industry 4.0 whenever it is applied to industrial initiatives. Raj identified the

two critical issues FedEx is facing: the Boolean effect and labor shortages at the ports.

The Boolean effect describes the scenario where a slight disruption in the demand side of

the market generates a lagged and exaggerated response on the supply side. This is
partially due to the nature of how modern supply chains are constructed, but more likely

because AI couldn’t keep up with drastic changes in the demand chains when rare “black-

swan level” incidents such as COVID-19 strike and still yields simulation models to

ensure excessive supplies under its high growth prediction. At the same time, neither AI

nor ML-backed algorithms are yet smart enough to predict what doesn’t lie inside the

training set/database and they often, if not always, leave out critical factors gradually

becoming important throughout the years which human programmers tend to overlook.

The most typical ones of which include embargo acts, recently enforced storage

regulations, and shortages of labor (which is a huge issue. “We have drafted advice and

sent it to the White House!” Raj exclaimed). Even Raj, an AI expert, admits that the

companies FedEx has acquired in the most recent years have somehow blindly believed

in and followed the technologies too closely without being aware of other subjective

factors or possible alternatives that could potentially avoid the issues that the company

now faces. Following this track, one would start to question the current mindless

enthusiasm with techs in Industry 4.0 and reconsider each technology’s maturity.

III. AI as a Terrible Master: Low-Skilled Workers’ View of Industry 4.0

We shouldn’t therefore solely focus on the possibilities that the technologies bring to

industrial mapping, development, and problem-solving process; provided the increasing

level of uncertainty in the global distribution of resources, labor, social mobility, political

influences, and other factors, we should be especially aware of the fact that AI and ML

could sometimes be unstable and even detrimental to a corporation’s development

because if applied with malicious intentions or of ill management, advanced technologies

have a more-of-the-case negative impact on the work dynamics and company culture due
to its rigidity and lack of humanitarian awareness. The machines backed by AI are not

ordinary machines that appear in Charles Chaplin’s Modern Times: they now rarely do

direct physical harm to human beings, but still preserve the nature of absolute

subjectiveness——whoever best operates with the AIs controls and works them towards

his/her own benefit, thus gaining advantaged access to the means of production that out-

competes human labor.

The quote “Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master.” comes from

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Christian Lange in the 1920s originally warning the public of

the sovereign state and the danger that technology imposes on civilization in that it could

potentially help states persist in militarized status. This quote, having been cited countless

times to warn people of the overreliance on mobile phones and technological support in

daily lives, has incorporated an additional layer of meaning describing work relationships

in Industry 4.0. Instead of being placed against militarized states, workers have

constantly been held as the gunpoint of tech capitalists, with AIs pulling the trigger.

When one makes the decision to let algorithms and machines take control of the

work, (s)he doesn’t simply give up the right to supervise the work contents and make

changes, but essentially makes the conscious decision to take responsibility for all effects

that the technology-the tool generates. If a bystander simultaneously acknowledges the

subjective nature of technologies and observes the negative outcomes, (s)he is likely to

acknowledge that the programmers and managers behind the tools have the obligations to

ensure that the end impact they generate are overall positive based on their own

individual ethical framework set forth and categorized into utilitarianism, deontology,

distributive justice, etc. In addition, for an algorithm to be considered “well-managed”

and “fully mature”, the managers should before that solemnly swear on their honors that

consistently reassess the companies’ social values varying with time and clarify the

necessity of their uses of high technology instead of human labor.

However, under very rare circumstances (perhaps at a testimony) have the tech

capitalists willingly reflected upon the extent to which they trust AI more than their

human workers, and how devastating the effect of AI integration to workplaces is for

some, if not all of their employees working on ground level. The second part of this quote

“a dangerous master” takes up a time significance when large tech companies, driven by

the urge to capture more percentages of market shares and dominating more social

resources, eagerly adopt AIs as the saviors of productivity and as the new name tag for

innovation without paying full attention to the drastic changes they bring to work

cultures, work contents and AI-worker and manager-worker relationships. Companies

could easily evolve into the situation where managers see AIs as loyal servants, but

workers see AIs as terrible masters. In some extreme scenarios, AIs in the hands of tech

capitalists are no less bloodsucking than a leech when working towards the workers. An

interview on Youtube featured Amazon ex-workers revealing the tip of an iceberg of

systematic worker exploitation at the warehouses driven by AI-backed monitoring

algorithms. Executive Director at the Warehouse Worker Resource Center Sheheryar

Kaoosji interviews several employees (now ex-employees) at the Amazon warehouse at

Sacramento, CA. to understand warehouse works are transformed by robots in terms of

work procedures, work conditions, and worker treatments. One of the casted workers

says they feel themselves “disposable” because “[they] are not treated as human beings;

[they] are not treated as robots; [they] are only treated as a part of the data stream.” (4:12)
The fundamental reason behind this transition is that even though the machines have

simplified the work modes and created huge capacity to process more goods and generate

more revenue, workers are heavily affected by the rigidity that the machines bring to their

work contents and could no longer gain a sense of accomplishment and growth from their

works. To some extent, the AIs have deprived the workers of rights to express humanity

during work. The video clip also incorporates the defense for the system from Amazon’s

CEO of Global Consumer, Jeff Wilke, who claims that Amazon manages the pace and

treats the workers well by giving them “excellent jobs with high pays and other benefits.”

However, when asked about the views of the ex-employees and their complaints, Jeff

immediately deemed them unqualified for the job and that more highly skilled workers

were eager to work at this pay and workstyle. CEOs like Jeff essentially pay more

attention to the end product than the process: workers are deemed subordinate in the

perfect systems they created and furnished with high techs. Amazon simultaneously

covered up its anti-Union stance by placing the AI, instead of the managers themselves,

in the spot to blame for work injuries, transferring work safety responsibilities back to the

workers.

IV. The Subordinate Workers

Therefore, even as technologies catch up in the knowledge that humans feed into

them and could tirelessly carry out the missions at high precision in perfectly controllable

environments, they could still negatively affect critical factors at work, leading to

undesirable work experiences and a broad, scary term, a “humanitarian crisis”. Even if

the workers have a choice to switch to lower-paid, less stressful jobs if they want to, or

they could go through the financially challenging, potentially rewarding retraining

process to take on a new job, they should be well informed of the work contents and

potential changes in these contents ahead of time that are clarified by legal terms

embedded in the contract and are well explained and executed by the company, and they

should have the right to resist fast paced changes that could be physically and mentally

challenging. What’s more important, tech capitalists are guilty to have exploited the

rights of the workers based on the imbalanced power granted by AIs and by their own

systemic suppression of voices from could-have-existed worker Unions, and the social

legislative branches and execution branches (government agencies included) are guilty as

well to have witnessed this transition taking place without stepping in to help the

exploited workers. The undereducated, repetitively “disposed”, unwillingly retrained, and

constantly exploited workers are thus the perfect victims under the production and

operation systems introduced in Industry 4.0, whether they judge their silicon-based

colleagues as friends or foe.

The transition to a solely AI-oriented workplace could be unethical, yet the trend

still persists because the identity as a high-tech company leading an industrial revolution

appeals to the investors and is thus financially tempting and to some degree even

fashionable. During the interview, Sheheryar is worried that other warehouses, after

seeing that Amazon has adopted this management strategy, will follow suit to apply

intensive robotics to the workplace. He concludes the end result: workers are forced to

keep up with the “pace” and will unwillingly sacrifice their well-being to help companies

collect more data, which are then transformed into harsher policies based on “improved

performance” and again imposed on workers.

 Sheheryar’s concern isn’t groundless provided an insight into the “AI rush” that

has been heated every moment: According to enterprise technician and AI expert Louis

Columbus, approximately “50% of enterprises plan to spend more on AI and ML” in

2021 with one claiming that “they would significantly increase their budgets''. The

pandemic generates a sense of urgency for companies to renovate their business models

and accelerate their AI/ML programs to “transform customers…and transform their

business”. While this trend certainly benefits the data scientists, mainstream media

remain silent on how workers with little or no programming background or management

knowledge would be affected. In this sense, a systematic study of workers’ treatment

(wages, working environments, workloads, retirement plans, etc.) gradient evolving from

differences in job titles, work contents (whether or not requiring professional knowledge

on transformative technologies) and educational levels should be further conducted to

better understand whether AI has become an essential factor to determine the

underrepresented workers’ social status.

V. The Great Resignation and the Great Job Loss: Losses and Gains in the

U.S.’s Labor-Intensive Industries

According to a projection report on job positions’ supply changes from 2012 to

2022 conducted by U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in early 2014 (Appendix C), more job

openings would appear in labor-intensive industries, whether service-providing or job-

producing, due to a combination of industry growth and replacement needs (from

workers who have permanently left the industry). The top ten categories of jobs listed in

the chart were all service industries heavily affected by social-political factors and

instability in the labor market. It’s worth noticing that the majority of industries projected
to have the most job openings suffer from the most severe decline in labor supply

possibly due to combined factors: the intolerable fast pace nature of work; less

educational barrier to enter; the lack of acknowledgement of workers’ personal values;

the lack of social mobility taking up these jobs comparing to other better job options; and

introduction of disruptive technologies.

The contrast between projected gains and losses of jobs in their corresponding

industries also convey the message that technologies’ involvement has become a critical

factor for job displacements in the goods-producing industries in the short term

(Appendix D and E). One out of the top twenty but eleven out of the bottom twenty

industries projected to increase opening job positions are projected to be goods-producing

industries. Even though the scales of increases and decreases have contrasting

magnitudes, the percentage of good-producing industries affected by the incoming

Industry 4.0 (not just the last twenty listed above) is alarming enough to bring down the

overall labor force participation rate (Appendix F).

So what does it mean for those who still remain in the industries and for those

who will join the workforce in the near future? The likelihood for one to have a fully

automated robot colleague will continue to increase in the future, but before that, two

events will occur: the Great Resignation and the Great Job Loss.

The first event and what is now a notable social trend, “the Great Resignation”,

comes along with the declining workforces in these unstable industries easily substituted

by automation. According to BusinessInsider writer Marie-Christine Nizzi, close to 8

million people quit working in the second season of 2021, a significant sign that people
have gradually adjusted to the benefits that remote or contactless job positions yield. The

“Great Resignation” is currently seen as the aftermath of people’s adjustments during

COVID times workers’ resistance to the rigid “in-office” nine-to-five working styles and

a rebellion against the never-ever-raised minimum wages. From this standpoint, the Great

Resignation symbolizes the awakening of workers’ sense of dignity at work and is

perhaps the first (hopefully not the last) time to exercise their rights embedded in their

labors. However, Nizzi warns the readers that this event is only “a slight shattering before

a large quake”: the future of work will be heavily affected by massive automation in

every industry, leading to more “involuntary resignations”—layoffs. Conventional jobs

with limited work contents and limited human-machine interaction requiring no

knowledge on AI or ML would be even harder to find, thus “challenge us to redefine the

very core of what gives us meaning.” Even though Nizzi focused on the positive changes

that one could make to swiftly adapt to the “new norm”, including increasing time

agency, redefining success, transform identity and create a meaning in work and life, a

number (if not all) of workers eagerly participating in “the Great Resignation” are not at

all mentally and financially prepared to make these changes. They are not fully aware of

this ongoing trend of automation and potential threats it could bring to the work that they

have grown accustomed to carrying out. Workers with limited understanding of ML or AI

would tend to follow others to resign not because they are well prepared to challenge

themselves, but rather because they are not well-informed of the future of jobs and find

the post-COVID era the best time to “try something new risk-free”. This is the reason

why “the Great Resignation”, though generating social mobility and could be beneficial

for some ambitious workers eager to take up AI-related skills, would impose a
detrimental effect on the growth of the industries that are less education/skill focused,

eventually leading to mass lack-of-supply-driven unemployment.

While workers have been more than ever reluctant to join the workforce, more

AIs have been adapted by more companies (to gain the reputation of “high tech

companies”) at an increasing pace to eliminate as many conventional jobs as possible.

Zolas et al. from the U.S. Census Report studied the spread of advanced technologies

across the industries to find that 5.9% of all companies have adopted touchscreens, 2.8%

have adopted machine learning, and 2.5% have adopted voice recognition (Appendix G).

Even though the numbers are low, representing companies’ hesitance to be the “first

person to eat the crab”, Zolas et al. stated that “the effects of technology adoption by

these firms will likely have growing influence on key economic aggregates, such as

employment and productivity.” Provided that the new wave of automation has just begun,

the supply and demand of workers in the labor market of each of the previously labor-

intensive industries will both decrease and eventually stabilize at an astonishingly low

functioning quantity. The end effect of AI’s job elimination process is profound:

According to PwC Analysis, AI will contribute approximately $15 trillion to global GDP

growth by 2030 at an expense of 30% of jobs. Moreover, the tremendous impacts of

automation on jobs are not evenly distributed across the industries, with “over 44% of

workers with low education at risk of automation by the mid-2030s.” AI, though

providing convenience to the end customers, not only shifts the labor market towards

demand-eccentric, meaning that workers would potentially lose the power to determine

wages or working conditions, but also permanently changes the work culture, meaning

that workers couldn’t even select their work partners or colleagues to be human and thus
lose the power to shape the company’s culture in a human-worker-friendly manner. This

stunning conclusion not only pictures the massive unemployment accompanied by huge

GDP growth on paper, but also suggests that wealth distribution from a national

standpoint is likely to worsen in the coming decades.

VI. The Widening Digital Skills Gap and Wealth Gap: AI’s Trust Crisis

“[R]obots have become integral to manufacturing, for instance, algorithms and

machine learning may become integral to the digital enterprise.…A fundamental shift in

the way we work.” While the first three arcs lie under the theme that Digital Adoption, a

digital platform educating the public of the incoming digital transformation, summarizes

in this excerpt, the final arc strikes at the root of AI-led unemployment: the widespread

information gap, digital skills gap and induced wealth gap. Based on previous analyses,

AI as a tool will most likely fail to redistribute wealth and maximize the “common good”

of the public in the foreseeable future due to the nature of transformation it brings to the

workplaces and to the worker-employer relationship. We have to be necessarily cautious

of all AI and ML programs attempting to deprive workers of the rights to exist-a safety

net, the rights to know-information on critical decisions during hiring and working, and

the rights to develop-upward mobility inside the corporation and generally, in the society.

According to Derek Laing, the hiring process consists of two main decision-

making processes. On the workers’ side, the job-market signaling: workers tend to

convey or conceal their abilities to the employers based on their self-identified strengths

and competitiveness. On the employers’ side, screening: “design job packages to

encourage applications from some types of workers and discourage other types.” A fair-

trade involving sharing of all critical information, also known as “symmetric

information”, requires the workers to reveal all their abilities and the employers revealing

all the necessary requirements and expectations. When AI is applied to screen the

applicants for a work, it could automatically adjust the screening strategies in favor of the

employer’s needs while gaining access to workers’ information through online platforms

and portfolios established throughout the screening process, meaning that employers

could easily access more information than what the workers wish to disclose. This unfair

advantage is also accumulative, meaning that the AI representing the employers could

gather the workers’ information, analyze them and store them for further uses, including

swiftly adjusting its own hiring strategies and making a profit by selling them to potential

buyers (illegal but untraceable in some cases). The workers, in comparison, don’t have

access to their competitors’ abilities since they are in most cases separately screened, nor

do they have access to the AI’s database to understand the employer’s purposes. This

shaded information gap yields the direct impact on wages and work contents and grants

employers the opportunity to wage-discriminate against workers, a form of intrinsic labor

exploitation.

At the same time, knowledge and power go hand in hand. In most cases, a society

appreciates knowledge and the transformative power it could bring to advance human

civilizations, but lacks the incentive to criticize any attempt to weaponize knowledge to

interrupt the process to make wealth distribution just from a progressive view. The

fundamental reason behind, as identified by the following reasoning, lies within the fact

that tech giants stay invincible under current legal terms to identify corruption, allocate

wealth, and attribute success. To begin with, employers who deploy AIs at work

influence the formation of new digital gaps and widen the existing ones. According to
Merriam Webster Dictionary, the digital divide (digital gap) represents “the economic,

educational, and social inequalities between those who have computers and online access

and those who do not.” This definition could be further expanded to incorporate the

inequality between those who have the professional knowledge to control and operate

technologies pushing Industry 4.0 and those who don’t. Digital Adoption identifies three

key factors that would impact the digital gap: Digital Innovation and Disruption, Digital

Transformation, and Digital Adoption. As described in the previous arcs, digital

innovations and disruptions are the fundamental push factors behind the incoming

unemployment waves; digital transformation provides an opportunity for enterprises to

boost the productivity to maximize market impact and satisfy customers at a cost of

unethically exploiting workers; digital adoptions, though at a slow pace, are expected to

accelerate and expand into all industries where the capitalists see profitable

transformations.

When an ideal combination of these factors forms, the digital gap is widened at

the maximized rate to hinder workers’ innovation, jeopardize the employees’ productivity

and performance, and eventually result in a humanitarian crisis. These negative turnouts

could be avoided in the first place provided that employers acknowledge the true values

workers bring to the company: instead of narrowing their interpretation of “value to an

enterprise” to numerical benefits an individual brings, the employers should be constantly

reminded of the work culture that a combined human workforce generates. Workers have

the right to question the necessities to adopt AIs in their companies and should be

allowed to participate in critical decision-making processes, even though blue papers

rarely gain enough support to overthrow the board of directors in modern enterprises.
VII. Empowering Low-Skilled Workers in the Face of Automation

Potential strategies are discussed to balance power of workers and employers as

Industry 4.0 gradually sinks in. The first strategy, proposed by Digital Adoption, aims at

streamlining workflow at specific workplaces. Targeting both employers’ benefits and

workers’ well-being, the strategy reduces the average amount of professional knowledge

that each individual worker needs to acquire, saving both the workers and employers time

and expenses to go through training. The second and more progressive strategy lies

within a social reform: campaigns and social programs to promote awareness of the

drastic changes that Industry 4.0 brings to each community and to individuals. The

desired outcome is a holistic increase in social awareness of Industry 4.0’s negative social

costs and the necessity to conduct fair employment, including specifying work contents,

detailing compensation for changing work environments, prevention of systematic

suppression of workers’ rights in the name of “upgrades”, paid training and additional

safety net applicable to a larger job range. The more influential strategy focuses on

governmental regulation: only enforced governmental regulation is good regulation. Each

tech company should be required to recruit public think tanks with professional

knowledge in AI and little connection with companies to assess the impacts on workers.

Finally, a social consensus on limiting AI applications for moral deeds must be reached

in the near future before irreversible harms to workers take place.

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-way-amazon-uses-tech-to-squeeze-performance-out-of-
workers-deserves-its-own-name-bezosism-11631332821?mod=tech_listb_pos2/

Nizzi, Marie-Christine. “The Great Resignation is just the beginning. We have to prepare
ourselves for a post-work world.” Opinion, businessinsider.com. BusinessInsider, 5 Nov.
2021,

https://www.businessinsider.com/the-great-resignation-automation-post-work-world-
workers-shortage-2021-11

Peters, Dray and Kaye. “SIG: Work life balance in HCI” CHI '12: CHI Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems, Austin, Texas, USA. May 5 - 10, 2012.

“How will automation impact jobs?” UK home/Services/Economics/Insights, pwc, PwC.co.uk,

Accessed 20, Nov. 2021,

https://www.pwc.co.uk/services/economics/insights/the-impact-of-automation-on-
jobs.html

Richard and Donald, “Employee Health Management: Challenges and

Opportunities” Academy of Management, The Academy of Management Executive
(1993-2005), Vol. 8, No. 2 (May, 1994), pp. 22-31.

Rüßmann, Michael et al. “Industry 4.0: The Future of Productivity and Growth in Manufacturing
Industries.” bcg, BCG.com, 09 Apr. 2015,

https://www.bcg.com/publications/2015/engineered_products_project_business_industry_4_futu
re_productivity_growth_manufacturing_industries
Sarvari et al. “Chapter 5 Technology Roadmap for Industry 4.0,” Ustundag, A., &
Cevikcan, E. (2018). Industry 4.0: Managing the Digital Transformation, Springer
International Publishing,

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emre-
Cevikcan/publication/319861804_Digital_Traceability_Through_Production_Value_Chain/links
/5cebb01892851c4eabc1371c/Digital-Traceability-Through-Production-Value-
Chain.pdf#page=110

Subramaniam, Raj. “Supply Chain Innovation at FedEx.” Hass School of Business, University of
California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 10 Nov. 2021.

Zolas, Nikolas et al. “Advanced Technologies Adoption and Use by U.S. Firms: Evidence from
the Annual Business Survey.” US Census Bureau, 2 July 2020.
Annotated Bibliography

“From Body Mechanics to Mindfulness, Amazon Launches Employee-Designed Health and

Safety Program called WorkingWell Across U.S. Operations.” businesswire.com, Amazon Press

center, 17 May 2021,

Available at: https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/body-

mechanics-mindfulness-amazon-launches-employee-designed.

Amazon’s Press Release provides the first-hand information on its WorkingWell program

on its website, detailing the company’s mission statement, large-scale investment, the program’s

components and their corresponding Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure success.

Citing data to show reduction in reportable musculoskeletal disorders injuries at its work sites,

Amazon’s Press Release aims to regain public trust and stakeholder confidence in its workers’

treatment and its dedication to improve working conditions at worksites.

This piece of article is information intensive. It relates the company’s workplace

management strategies to the intensive incorporation of technology into workers’ daily activities

by the wellness program. However, the piece of information is biased towards Amazon-its

information source, and also carries contents that may assist Amazon’s marketing campaigns. I

critically evaluated this piece of evidence in my presentation by referencing third party

perspectives and citing opposite claims towards the program’s usefulness.

“"You're Just Disposable": Former Amazon Workers Speak Out | "Amazon Empire" |

FRONTLINE.” YouTube, FRONTLINE PBS, 14 February 2020,

Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-KMXng5Cp0

 In this YouTube video, Executive Director at the Warehouse Worker Resource Center

Sheheryar Kaoosji interviews several employees (now ex-employees) at the Amazon warehouse

at Sacramento, CA. to understand warehouse works are transformed by robots in terms of work

procedures, work conditions, and worker treatments. One of the casted workers says they feel

themselves “disposable” because “[they] are not treated as human beings; [they] are not treated

as robots; [they] are only treated as a part of the data stream.” (4:12) The video clip also

incorporates the defense for the system from Amazon’s CEO of Global Consumer, Jeff Wilke,

who claims that Amazon manages the pace and treat the workers well by giving them “excellent

jobs with high pays and other benefits.” Sheheryar is worried that other warehouses, after seeing

that Amazon has adopted this management strategy, will follow suit to apply intensive robotics

to the work place. He concludes the end result: workers are forced to keep up with the “pace”

and will unwillingly sacrifice their well-being to help companies collect more data.

The video demonstrates a more comprehensive view of what actually occurs inside

Amazon’s warehouses. The contents are directly applicable to my analysis of workplace safety,

workers’ well-being, and how they are related to tech innovation and modern efficiency

management systems.

Mims, Christopher. “The Way Amazon Uses Tech to Squeeze Performance Out of Workers

Deserves Its Own Name: Bezosism.” wsj.com, Wall Street Journal, 11 September 2021,

Available at: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-way-amazon-uses-tech-to-squeeze-performance-

out-of-workers-deserves-its-own-name-bezosism-11631332821?mod=tech_listb_pos2.

Technology columnist Christopher Mims reports that workers are monitored by

algorithms to make rates at Amazon’s workspace for long, continuous working hours and under
isolated working conditions without human-human interaction. Christopher names this new

management style “Bezosism” which heavily relies on machine-centered, AI-driven automation

at workplaces to improve work efficiency. He states that workers are asked to meet the average

working rates set by their colleagues’ averaged performances regardless of individual physical or

mental conditions, leading to overworking and stress accumulation. Christopher’s argument

supports the workers’ claims during their interviews with Sheheryar.

An editor at Scientific American, Technology Review, Smithsonian and Grist,

Christopher Mims has years of experience reporting technology advances and their social

impacts. This time his focuses on work cultures, managerial styles and automation at Amazon’s

warehouses, directly supporting the claim that Amazon’s work culture overly exploits workers.

His analyses are based on first-hand factual reports and interviews, and his position as a third-

party expert in tech-related fields make this piece of evidence credible and priceless in my

research project.

Council, Jared. “AI’s Impact on Businesses—and Jobs.” wsj.com, Wall Street Journal, 8 March

2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/ais-impact-on-businessesand-jobs-11615234143?

mod=ig_workplacetechnologyreport.

Venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee acknowledges that the next “AI revolution” led by deep

learning would bring value to industries as well as to the customers but simultaneously deprive

human labor of its “force”—its comparative advantage comparing to machines in the labor

market. Kai-Fu offers his advice to CIOs: they should foresee AI’s rapid development in the next

few decades to replace repetitive tasks, and that they should prepare the application scenarios in
advance to embrace this change. He sees AI as a revolutionary force that would “be everywhere

like the Internet” in less than twenty years.

Kai-Fu Lee is an AI expert well known for his contribution to both Microsoft and

Google’s early development. He notes that most AI rely heavily on data, which explains

Amazon’s initiatives to establish a workplace management system that closely tracks its workers:

to collect data and find the most efficient work pattern. I hesitate to cite from Kai-Fu Lee in the

presentation because his claim is based on own one-sided view of AI’s positive benefits without

analyzing the other side as well as the setting of this interview: As a guest, Kai-Fu Lee is invited

as an authority, which puts him into a trustable position regardless of his statements’ objectivity.

Luse, Kaleb. "The Return of the Machinery Question: Is it different this time?," Major Themes

in Economics, 19, 1-16., 2017,

Available at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/mtie/vol19/iss1/3.

Kaleb constructs his argument that the incoming AI substitution of human labor will be

detrimental to the laboring class, unlike the tech revolutions in the past that have instead led to

creation of more jobs. He sees the fourth industrial revolution, even though benefiting everyone

from employers to workers to consumers, have led to public concern after AI-driven machines

outperform human beings in industrial applications. According to Kaleb, technology-induced

unemployment wave is only accelerated after the massive deployment of AI at workplaces.

Kaleb concludes that misuse of AI will eventually result in massive unemployment without

policy intervention as it further expands to more industries and vary in forms and mediums to

transport, which makes it untraceable.

 Kaleb’s argument is focused on AI’s impact on the labor market and how this wave of

industrial revolution differs from the former waves in varied facets. His argument has led me

think of the comeback of “Tech Optimism”, a term invented around 2005 to describe the public’s

optimistic view of tech advances. It also leads me to another source, CiXin Liu’s The Three-

Body Problem questioning AI’s effect on work-relations.

Final Research Project Reflection

I should first express my gratitude towards all my classmates who offer great advice

throughout the semester. We heatedly discussed numerous topics, some of which were the nature

of being human, research as a conversation, the workers’ fate under the automation wave,

athletes’ psychological responses to social media, AI and data collection’s ethical boundaries,

etc., all of which have helped train my researching skills and shaped my mode of thinking,

reflecting, free-writing and editing.

I would specifically give a huge shout-out to my professor PhD. Carmen Avocado

Butcher who is the best instructor on researching at Berkeley (together with her best friend and

my R4A professor Mary Grover). You showed me that the spirit of researching lies within each

and every one of us. When you encouraged me to free-write and always tentatively listen to me

during classes and after classes via emails, you have planted the seed of confidence in

researching in my heart and I can feel that it is going to sprout. The inspiration that you

conveyed to us when you sang the ancient English song in front of us was priceless; the

scavenger hunt was innovative and right now I still have the baby Yoda sticker on my computer;

the mystery solving activities that you carefully designed to cheer the athlete students

demonstrated your dedication in the teaching career and your care for them. Thank you. Thank

you so much for being a brilliant teacher and a good friend.

In terms of personal growth and the researching strategies, I have formed the habit to go

to lectures and conferences as well as diving in the sea of knowledge at Moffitt, DOE,

Engineering Library and Haas Library, etc. to dig up some gold and to learn some random facts

that may not be so random after all. The librarian activities were engaging and helped me attain
the primary sources for this paper. The most precious takeaway from this course is that

researching is joyful: it is a fun journey if one knows how to properly let interest guide the way.