Eye Contact Correction: Redirecting the eyes to look at the camera

The fact that your feathers are rustled is what make it all the more delicious and delightful that it exists.

All attempts by folks to subvert the freedom to direct one's attention where they want to are tyrannical in nature. If you can't detect it's happening, it effectively did not have a negative externality. The tree did not make a sound if no one heard it.

This is the same thought that is used to justify not letting cashiers sit while they bag groceries. Those who think this love the taste of boots in their mouth.

I hope that they fire those who refuse to get with the times on AI and embrace ludditism, and I hope your wife considers her future with you after the economic ruin that such practices will bring upon your family.

Really weird non-sequiturs here!

So if you enjoy freedoms like ignoring your boss or zoning out during meetings where you should be paying attention, or missing a lecture by your instructor, and you believe there aren't any negative externalities from your failure to pay attention, then I don't know what to tell you.

Now the WFH revolution is already horrifying managers, because it is much more difficult to determine when employees are engaged and productive, vs. when they're trying to fake it, or tuned out. If this AI filter wants to remove one of those cues, that's going to continue horrifying businesses everywhere, and they'll double-down on RTO calls. I've also heard horror stories of hiring remote workers, who will fake interviews, rent their identities, deepfake their video, consult AI offscreen to answer interview questions, subcontract to their illegal buddies, and generally use every trick in the book to hoodwink corporations who make the mistake of not having an in-person relationship with their workforce.

My job coach taught me the value of eye contact, and by extension, the value of paying attention to another human being who is engaged in a discussion with me. That is extremely important. In any online interaction, due to reduced cues and limited feedback, any human cue we can maintain is a valuable one.

My lack of eye contact, I believe, is mostly because it can unnerve me to have someone looking intently at me, and I look away from them in order to collect my thoughts, and maintain my train of thought. It's a habit but it's not necessarily effective. It turns out that most of us can indeed carry on a conversation, and not get distracted, when we're looking into someone's eyes.

And the value to the other party is that they know that they have our attention! That is a gift! I have no idea how tasting boots is relevant here. Every job I've had, has been a mutual gift, and a pleasure to serve my employer, and I've always felt valued for that service, despite the unequal power differential.

It is so weird that you want us to "get with the times on AI" when eye contact is such a basic, very human, and valuable habit of successful people. If AI could facilitate a human connection, I'd be all ears, but in this case, for this article, AI is subverting the signal, encouraging laziness, and simply lying, to "save face", as it were.

> zoning out during meetings where you should be paying attention

Also zoning out during the meetings where your presence is required but unnecessary. If you don't pay attention to a university lecture, that's a skill issue on your part.

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The role of the worker is to extract as much value for their employer as possible; any productivity is a secondary byproduct.

I would contend that, where an employee/student is disengaged in a videoconference and demonstrating that, that is a good feedback signal to the leadership that the followers are indeed disengaged and perhaps the leadership is doing something wrong.

Because I was in exactly that position as a teaching assistant, and we dealt with students all the time who had cameras turned off, AFK, distracted, lost.

If AI is going to mask those important feedback signals and lie to the leadership, then the leadership will become ever more ineffective, and the workers will all pay the price. Good job.

The workers previously would've faked the signals to pretend to be engaged organically to brown nose the boss. Same lie, now automated to free the worker for better tasks, such as napping or bugfixes.