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Amazon begins temperature checks and will provide surgical masks at warehouses

(www.reuters.com)
265 points ajaviaad | 2 comments | 02 Apr 20 14:47 UTC | HN request time: 0.415s | source
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oski ◴[02 Apr 20 16:42 UTC] No.22760865[source]▶
TL;DR: starting next week, Amazon will start:

1) taking temperatures of employees, fever >100.4°F to be sent home for min 3 days

2) giving surgical masks to employees once it receives shipments of orders of “millions”

3) using machine learning-powered video software to monitor social distancing

(Shameless plug for a little site I made to help spread the word that we need #masks4all: https://shouldiwearafacemask.com)

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pacala ◴[02 Apr 20 16:46 UTC] No.22760910[source]▶
> 3) using machine learning-powered video software to monitor social distancing

Ughhh... Never let a good crisis go to waste. How about we ban machine learning systems to monitor people's movement at scale?

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1. xyzzy_plugh ◴[02 Apr 20 17:06 UTC] No.22761137[source]▶
This is Amazon's entire warehouse solution, in some sense. Pickers are "optimized" by software. It's probably relatively trivial to teach the system to keep people further apart, at the cost of optimal routing.

They're not monitoring the public, they're monitoring their supply chain system.

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2. pacala ◴[02 Apr 20 18:31 UTC] No.22762062[source]▶
They are monitoring human movement, at scale. This is dangerous.

* video feeds + machine learning system for monitoring warehouse workers.

* video feeds + machine learning system for monitoring shoppers.

* video for monitoring entire neighborhoods.

Hmmm, I wonder what their business plan might be.