United States of Amazon: exposing horrible business practices & more

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Nvidia Wants to Replace Nurses With AI for $9 an Hour

Your health could soon be in the hands of Nvidia-powered AI nurses, and they cost your healthcare provider next to nothing.

gizmodo.com

Nvidia announced a collaboration with Hippocratic AI on Monday, a healthcare company that offers generative AI nurses who work for just $9 an hour. Hippocratic promotes how it can undercut real human nurses, who can cost $90 an hour, with its cheap AI agents that offer medical advice to patients over video calls in real-time.

“Voice-based digital agents powered by generative AI can usher in an age of abundance in healthcare, but only if the technology responds to patients as a human would,” said Kimberly Powell, vice president of Healthcare at NVIDIA in a press release Monday.

Nvidia is powering Hippocratic’s real-time responses over video calls. In a demo posted by Nvidia, a semi-human-looking AI agent named Rachel verbally instructs a patient on how to take penicillin. The agent then tells the patient it will report back all this information to her real human doctor. Rachel is one of many AI nurses that healthcare providers can choose from, according to one of Hippocratic’s product pages. The AI nurses range in specialties from “Colonoscopy Screening” to “Breast Cancer Care Manager,” all for less than minimum wage.

Hippocratic directly promotes how it can undercut the living wages of real nurses as a feature, not a bug. One page of the company’s website compares a human nurse’s $90 per hour salary to an AI agent’s $9 an-hour running costs. Hippocratic claims its AI nurses outperform human nurses regarding bedside manner, education, and narrowly miss on satisfaction, according to a survey.

The introduction of AI healthcare agents comes at a tumultuous time for the nursing industry. Over 32,000 nurses went on strikes around the country in 2023, representing a quarter of all major strikes in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nurses are dealing with worker shortages, that predate the covid-19 pandemic, which Hippocratic seeks to address.

The Hippocratic collaboration was one of many announcements from Nvidia’s 2024 GTC Conference, but this AI development was perhaps the most dystopian. Hippocratic says its AI nurses were tested by thousands of human nurses and hundreds of human doctors. The company’s technology is being tested by over 40 healthcare providers around the country.

“With Generative AI, the incremental cost of healthcare access and interventions is trending to zero,” says Hippocratic on its About page. “LLMs are the only scalable way to close this gap,” referring to the difference in healthcare supply and demand.

The AI company working with Nvidia says its generative AI nurses are not sufficient to make diagnoses. The AI healthcare agent is trained to engage a human when appropriate. Hippocratic’s name is inspired by The Hippocratic Oath, a code of ethics that physicians adhere to that means to “first, do no harm.”

 

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Train Safety Fixed Forever: Miles-Long Freight Trains Now Require 2 Whole Crew Members

The new rule still allows for one-person train crews after a special approval process.

jalopnik.com

Freight railroads are using something called Precession Scheduling to run longer trains with fewer crewmembers in order to maximize profits. To hopefully curb potential accidents, the Biden Administration mandated Tuesday a bare minimum that at least two people be aboard sometimes miles-long freight trains. Some trains, however, will get a pass even on this bare bones basic safety requirement.


Dangerous derailments, especially the toxic chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio, prompted public scrutiny, but progress on new legislation has moved at a glacial pace. This new rule is the first proposed since 2022. In a statement from the Federal Railroad Administration, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said:

“Common sense tells us that large freight trains, some of which can be over three miles long, should have at least two crew members on board - and now there’s a federal regulation in place to ensure trains are safely staffed. This rule requiring safe train crew sizes is long overdue, and we are proud to deliver this change that will make workers, passengers, and communities safer.”
Now, I wouldn’t consider a train over a mile long with two crewmembers “safely staffed.” Continuing on from Buttigieg’s example, a crewmember is expected to walk six miles if a three-mile-long train is forced to stop due to an issue at the other end. During this lengthy hike, the train is stopped wherever it is for at least an hour. Yes, requiring a second crewmember is a marked improvement, but it barely reaches the bare minimum for safety. The railroad companies claim there’s no evidence that larger crews will make operations safer, but the smaller, less safe crews were one of the many complaints railroad workers brought to the table in 2021 when a nationwide freight strike loomed.


The new FRA rule doesn’t outright ban one-person crews. Existing single-handed operations, including hauling hazardous materials, can continue if they “do not pose significant safety risks to railroad employees, the public, or the environment.” The new rule also establishes an approval process for new one-person crew operations.

 

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Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery Stores

Amazon Fresh is moving away from a feature of its grocery stores where customers could skip checkout altogether.

gizmodo.com

Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery Stores​

Amazon Fresh is moving away from a feature of its grocery stores where customers could skip checkout altogether.​

Amazon is phasing out its checkout-less grocery stores with “Just Walk Out” technology, first reported by The Information Tuesday. The company’s senior vice president of grocery stores says they’re moving away from Just Walk Out, which relied on cameras and sensors to track what people were leaving the store with.


Just over half of Amazon Fresh stores are equipped with Just Walk Out. The technology allows customers to skip checkout altogether by scanning a QR code when they enter the store. Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped.

Instead, Amazon is moving towards Dash Carts, a scanner and screen that’s embedded in your shopping cart, allowing you to checkout as you shop. These offer a more reliable solution than Just Walk Out. Amazon Fresh stores will also feature self check out counters from now on, for people who aren’t Amazon members.

“We’re rolling out Amazon Dash Cart, our smart-shopping carts,” said an Amazon spokesperson to Gizmodo. Amazon confirmed this feature is replacing its Just Walk Out technology in existing stores.

Just Walk Out was first introduced in 2016, presenting Amazon’s biggest and boldest innovation in grocery shopping. The technology seemed incredible, but there were some stumbles. It often took hours for customers to receive receipts after leaving the store, largely because offshore cashiers were rewatching videos and assigning items to different customers. The system of scanners and video cameras in each store is also incredibly expensive.

According to The Information, 700 out of 1,000 Just Walk Out sales required human reviewers as of 2022. This widely missed Amazon’s internal goals of reaching less than 50 reviews per 1,000 sales. Amazon called this characterization inaccurate, and disputes how many purchases require reviews.

“The primary role of our Machine Learning data associates is to annotate video images, which is necessary for continuously improving the underlying machine learning model powering,” said an Amazon spokesperson to Gizmodo. However, the spokesperson acknowledged these associates validate “a small minority” of shopping visits when AI can’t determine a purchase.

Amazon Fresh, the e-commerce giant’s grocery store first launched in 2007, has just over 40 locations around the United States. The company also owns Whole Foods, and many of Amazon Fresh’s experiments are seen as precursors for the large chain.

The company is reportedly keeping Just Walk Out technology in a small number of Fresh stores in the United Kingdom, and some of its Amazon Go convenience stores. Amazon has also implemented Just Walk Out technology at several ballparks around the country. These locations will keep the technology going.


Amazon is trying to further break into the grocery space to grow into another billion-dollar market. Though it owns Whole Foods, the e-commerce giant still doesn’t compete with food goliaths like Walmart, Costco, and Kroger. Amazon’s push away from expensive tests like Just Walk Out may be a sign the company is looking to further expand its presence as a supermarket.

All the elitist people that were always saying "of course we don't need cashiers, its a worthless unskilled job & they dont deserve a living wage & AI thats better than them is already here for those jobs", a few years ago, are quiet now that they're walking back all this self checkout nonsense. Some of us already knew it was all smoke n mirrors so they didnt have to pay people.

 

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UAW Head Calls Stellantis Leadership "Pathetic" Over Cuts And Huge Executive Compensation

UAW President Shawn Fain isn't exactly happy about it

jalopnik.com

UAW President Shawn Fain has called out Stellantis as being “pathetic” in a recent Facebook live broadcast event for United Auto Workers union members. The multi-national automaker conglomerate recently fired scores of full-time workers from its Warren Assembly plant where the Ram 1500 and Jeep Wagoneer are built. Further engineering, tech, and software jobs jobs were cut across the first quarter of 2024, as the company hopes to replace them with lower-salary engineers from Morocco, India, and Brazil, according to Automotive News.


All of this comes just months after the company came to terms with the union in collective bargaining that it would hire 3,200 temp workers on full-time and increase wages up to 25 percent. Instead, the company fired nearly 900 “supplemental employees” so far this year. It seems the company is going back on its deal with the UAW just six months into the ratified contract.

“Honestly, the leadership is pathetic. You got a CEO over there across the pond that wants to talk about how they need to cut costs and all this stuff, but it didn’t stop him from giving himself a 56 percent pay increase.”

Carlos Tavares remains the highest paid of the big-three automaker CEOs, taking home $39 million in compensation for his efforts in 2023, up from $24.8 million in 2022. Based on the average $59,384 salary in the U.S., Tavares makes as much as 657 American workers. It seems like the company could have found that money somewhere else, instead of killing the livelihoods of hundreds of people.

With the contract agreement last November, Stellantis said it would invest $19 billion in new U.S. projects, 25 percent wage increases, destruction of the “tiers” system, and guaranteed full-time status for 3,200 supplemental employees. Instead of hiring those supplemental employees, Stellantis has instead fired hundreds of them and has said more layoffs are coming in the U.S. to “help improve productivity and ensure the company’s long-term sustainability in a rapidly changing global market.

 

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Poultry company responsible for teen's 2023 death found to have 'oppressive child labor' at separate plant: DOL

In a statement to ABC News, Mar-Jac said the minors were hired with documents "that showed they were over 18 years of age."

abcnews.go.com

Investigators allegedly again found minors working on the kill floor of a poultry plant owned by the company that was found responsible for the death of a teenager last year, according to court filings.

Department of Labor investigators said they discovered on May 1 "oppressive child labor" at the poultry plant in Alabama, "namely children working on the kill floor deboning poultry and cutting carcasses," after obtaining a civil search warrant.

"The children had been working at the facility for months," the filing said.

According to court documents, the company, Mar-Jac Poultry, denied knowing it had any employees who were under 18 years.

In a statement to ABC News, Mar-Jac said the minors were hired with documents "that showed they were over 18 years of age."
"Mar-Jac will continue to vigorously defend itself and expects to prevail in this matter," the company said. "Mar-Jac is committed to complying with all relevant law."

The Department of Labor is seeking a court order to stop the company from selling and shipping "poultry tainted by oppressive child labor" from the company's plant in Alabama, according to court filings.

Federal regulators had earlier this year called the July 2023 death of Duvan Perez, a 16-year-old who died while cleaning a poultry processing machine at a Mar-Jac facility, "a preventable, dangerous situation" that no worker should have been in, "let alone a child."

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited Mar-Jac Poultry with 14 serious and three "other than serious" violations and proposed $212,646 in penalties for Perez's death. The agency previously cited the company for an incident in 2021 in which an employee who was not a minor suffered fatal injuries while working.

The Alabama plant was cited in December by OSHA for a serious violation after an employee was injured.

According to the Department of Labor, last year 5,800 children were employed in violation of child labor laws, representing an 88% increase since 2019. And of the 955 child labor cases that were investigated and closed by federal regulators in 2023, more than half involved minors employed in violation of hazardous occupation laws.

 

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"In a far less-noticed law enforcement action, the FBI this week conducted a dawn raid of corporate landlord giant Cortland Management over what’s called algorithmic price-fixing. This corporate real estate management firm, based in Atlanta, rents out 85,000 units across thirteen states. But Cortland is allegedly part of a much bigger conspiracy orchestrated by a software and consulting firm named RealPage to increase rents nationwide by coordinating landlord pricing decisions and holding apartments off the market. How much bigger? Well, there’s a civil antitrust action in Tennessee that’s been going on since 2023, where the argument is that RealPage has been working with at least 21 large landlords and institutional investors, encompassing 70% of multi-family apartment buildings and 16 million units nationwide, to systematically push up rents. And RealPage isn’t just some software company distorting rental markets, it’s also owned by Thoma Bravo, one of the biggest private equity firms in the U.S. So yeah, this scandal matters.​

(RealPage is also lobbying up, which politically connected firms do…) How does the cartel allegedly work? Well large corporate landlords, who would normally compete with one another for tenants via price or quality, have since 2016 stopped doing so. Instead, they all share “detailed real-time data regarding pricing, inventory, occupancy rates, and unit types that are or will be coming available to rent” every day with one another through RealPage’s revenue management system, which in turn sends back recommendations on pricing. Landlords adopt RealPage recommendations on pricing 80-90% of the time, which explicitly drives up revenue by holding apartments off the market"​

 

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Why Zoom—yes, Zoom—went back to in-person work, according to its chief people officer

“Proximity bias certainly exists,” Matthew Saxon acknowledged.

fortune.com

clown looks like youd expect him to look

also this

 

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Its a long read and yall hate reading so imma just quote some parts

Prisoners in Alabama and Louisiana sue over forced prison labor

Inmates in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands. A hidden path to America's dinner tables begins here, at an unlikely source – a former Southern slave plantation that is now the country's largest maximum-security prison. Alabama Public Radio’s national...

www.apr.org

Lawsuit: Alabama Is Denying Prisoners Parole to Lease Their Labor to Meatpackers, McDonalds

No parole if you’re still profitable.

inthesetimes.com

Lawsuit: Alabama Is Denying Prisoners Parole to Lease Their Labor to Meatpackers, McDonalds​

No parole if you’re still profitable.​

Working in the freezer at Southeastern Meats, a meatpacking facility based in Birmingham, Ala., “was the worst job I’ve ever had in my entire life,” Lakiera Walker tells In These Times. Her 12-hour shifts were spent inside a refrigerated building as cold as 30 or 40 degrees, and she had to beg or borrow warm clothes from her friends and family because the employer didn’t provide any.
She couldn’t even take solace in the idea that she was saving up money for her future, because the prison where she spent the rest of her waking hours was taking a 40% cut on top of various fees. As an incarcerated worker, Walker’s time was not her own — even when she was being forced to use it to make money for private employers and the state of Alabama.

Walker, 36, is one of 10 plaintiffs in Robert Earl Council aka Kinetik Justice v. Kay Ivey, a landmark class-action lawsuit challenging what they and their supporters describe as an unconstitutional forced labor scheme in Alabama’s state prisons. They allege the state’s disproportionately Black incarcerated population is being intentionally exploited for profit. The 126-page complaint was filed in the middle district court of Alabama on Dec. 12, 2023, by the 10 currently or formerly incarcerated workers, the Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW), the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) Mid-South Council, and the Woods Foundation. The suit describes how incarcerated Alabamians are forced to work for free in prison and paid extremely low wages to work for hundreds of private employers — including meatpacking plants and fast-food franchises like McDonald’s — as well as more than 100 city, county and state agencies. And it alleges that the state keeps the scheme going by systematically denying parole to those eligible to work outside jobs.
Prison labor is big business in the United States. According to a 2022 ACLU report, Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers, incarcerated workers save prisons more than $9 billion a year in operational costs and earn them more than $2 billion in sales of goods and services, while the prisoners make pennies per hour. They have no say over what types of work they perform or how they’re compensated for that labor, and a survey by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 76% of the nation’s roughly 800,000 incarcerated workers are unable to refuse to work without punishment or retaliation.

None of this is unique to Alabama, but Alabama is one of only seven states that pays nothing to prisoners who work to keep its prisons running. The Yellowhammer State also has a particularly rotten reputation for how it treats its incarcerated population, with a notoriously overcrowded, dirty, dangerous and corrupt prison system. The prisoner mortality rate is five times higher than the national average.
For these reasons and more, the plaintiffs I spoke with told me that, once word spread that a class action was brewing, they jumped at the chance. There is a long list of defendants, including Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, Attorney General Steve Marshall, three members of the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles, Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm and Transportation Director John Cooper, as well as the cities of Montgomery and Troy, Jefferson County, and a number of private employers, including Gemstone Foods, Progressive Finishes and McDonald’s. The suit charges them with violating Alabama’s State Constitution — which, as of 2022, bans slavery and involuntary servitude—as well as the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
In the case of the government officials, they’re also accused of conspiring to increase the size of the Alabama prison population — which is predominantly Black — through the discriminatory denial of parole so the state can continue profiting from forced labor. “[Prisoners] have been entrapped in a system of ‘convict leasing’ in which incarcerated people are forced to work, often for little or no money, for the benefit of the numerous government entities and private businesses that ‘employ’ them,” the suit charges.

Lakiera Walker worked for Jefferson County doing roadwork for approximately two years and was paid a $2 daily wage to handle large trash removal (including a Jacuzzi). She found out that the non-incarcerated workers on her team were making $10 per hour for the same job.
During Walker’s time working at Southeastern Meats, she technically started at $12 per hour, which she believes is the same as her non-incarcerated coworkers, but after the Alabama prison system got through with her check, she was only bringing home about $100 in her weekly paycheck, which works out to less than $2 per hour. ADOC deducts 40% of the check as a “fee” and then often adds other fees, such as a $5 “transportation fee” to take workers to and from work.
After Southeastern Meats, Walker was sent to Burger King, where she worked right up until her release date. Once Walker left state custody, she called to collect her final check, but found it had already been sent to ADOC. After that, according to her lawyer, no one knows what happened to it. “So I’m coming out of prison with $10 and not the check that I worked hard for,” Walker explains. “You don’t have to take 40% from me. I’m at home!”

Walker says. She says she was regularly required to work seven days a week, and she often had to work two shifts a day.
None of these prison jobs were paid, and quitting or refusing work was not a viable option. “You can’t say, ‘Hey, I can’t go to work today,’” Walker explains. “You would go to segregation, which was solitary confinement. … People were so tired and just hopeless at that point, they would kind of welcome solitary confinement, just to have a break.”

Another plaintiff, Lee Edward Moore Jr., a genial 51-year-old Black man, has been in ADOC custody since 1997. He is currently incarcerated at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Ala., and was most recently denied parole in 2022. It was his fourth time being denied since 2009. He cannot for the life of him understand why.
His story spans decades and has seen him change prison “careers” many times. One of his first jobs at Holman was refitting the execution chamber; he remembers tearing out the old electric chair when the prison was switching over to lethal injections. As a highly skilled worker, he is constantly in demand, and the lawsuit describes how, over the years, he has been asked to do “plumbing, heating and air conditioning installation and maintenance, installation of phone lines, electrical work, and all manners of construction and yard work” projects for the prison. Like Lakiera Walker, Moore has been called down to the healthcare unit to help clean and provide care for fellow prisoners. For the past decade, Moore has also been asked to work on projects outside of the prison, during which he is typically left unsupervised; he’s even personally remodeled wardens’ own state-provided houses.

That element is the strangest part of his story. Moore’s reputation among the prison’s officials is squeaky-clean — as his lawyer interjected during our call, “Lee has the cleanest file I’ve ever seen, and he’s been in some of the toughest prisons in Alabama” — and Moore is clearly a low-risk, highly motivated individual. As the lawsuit reads, “There is no reasonable argument that he poses a threat to public safety as he has been working long hours daily since he was first incarcerated, without pay, for ADOC, both inside and outside prison walls without incident.” Moore has paying construction jobs waiting for him once he does go home, and a wife and family desperate to see him. His step-daughter is a parole officer, and several of Moore’s family members are in law enforcement.

The wardens at Holman continually recommended Moore for parole.

And yet, Moore’s custody level has not budged. He has not been allowed to participate in a work-release program, which would at least provide a paycheck. And his latest request for a sentence reduction was denied.
Now, Moore won’t get his next chance to come home until 2027. That’s why he joined the class action. “We’re being treated like slaves in here,” he says. “We just sit here. It’s hopeless. Trying to go for parole, there’s no hope

 

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In 2015, the state of Alabama reacted to reports of dangerous overcrowding within ADOC — prisons were at 195% capacity — by enacting measures intended to parole more people while hiring more parole and probation officers, plus an effort to reduce recidivism by investing in community-based substance use disorder and mental health treatment centers. The reforms initially were a success: They reduced the overcrowding and nearly equalized parole outcomes between Black and white prisoners.

But after far-right Gov. Kay Ivey came to power in 2017, progress stopped — and began rolling back. Ivey immediately took pains to curb parole grants. The lawsuit alleges that Ivey forced parole boards to disregard the “evidence-based objective standards” for parole decisions that had increased parole grants prior to 2018. The next year, the parole grant rate fell from 53% to 31%. It continued to plummet, and the gap between Black and white prisoners’ likelihood of being granted parole widened. Between 2020 and 2022, Black prisoners were denied parole at twice the rate of white ones.

By 2022, the parole rate was 11% overall and only 7% for Black prisoners — meaning that 93% of parole-requesting Black prisoners were denied.

That’s what happened to Alimireo English, a charismatic 48-year-old Black man who, according to a judge, should not be in prison right now. It’s a convoluted story, but he was taken into ADOC custody in October 2020 after his parole from a previous conviction was revoked over new misdemeanor charges. A jury acquitted him of those charges on Nov. 8, 2021, and a judge ordered his release.

But instead of being back home with his family, at church with his faith community, or visiting his eldest son in New York, English is at the Ventress Correctional Facility in Clayton, Ala. His case did not come before the parole board until November 28, 2023, more than two years after he’d already been acquitted, but he was denied anyway. His next parole date is November 2024.

“They gotta keep me for another year until they can find somebody else on the street that they can pull back in and take my place,” English tells me. “If they can’t replace you, they don’t let you go.”

It is even more jarring given how he spends his time at his unwelcome new home. English works as a dorm representative for the facility’s Faith Dorm, where he is on call 24 hours a day, seven days per week. He is responsible for the safety and well-being of 190 incarcerated men, many of them elderly or medically vulnerable. He handles custodial duties and maintenance, screens dorm visitors and is also the first responder for drug and health emergencies. In his scant free time, he runs a therapy and counseling group for his fellow prisoners. He consistently works 12 to 15 hour days and, for most of the week, he is the sole individual in charge of the dorm; a retired prison chaplain comes in to assist him a few times weekly, but otherwise English is not supervised by any corrections personnel.

As the lawsuit highlights, “Since Mr. English has been in this position, the Faith Dorm has had no fights, deaths, or overdoses.”
The plaintiffs’ legal team estimates that ADOC saves roughly $200,000 a year by not having a corrections officer in that one dorm. Meanwhile, English is paid nothing. “The inmates basically run the prison, but the officers are getting compensated for it,” English says. “The wages the inmates are paid for their work hasn’t changed since 1927.”

 

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