Amazon granted patent for workers in robot cages

Packages emblazoned with Amazon logos travel along a conveyor belt inside of an Amazon fulfillment center in Robbinsville, New Jersey, U.S., November 27, 2017. Amazon was granted a patent in 2016 for a new way to transport human beings around Amazon warehouses. Workers would sit in a cage-like enclosure on top of a claw-arm robot, which researchers have described as an "extraordinary illustration of worker alienation." The patent was highlighted in a case study called "Anatomy of an AI System," published on Friday by Kateb Crawford (New York University, and principal researcher at Microsoft Research) and Vladan Joler (University of Novi Sad). Crawford and Joler's work describes how "the worker becomes a part of a machinic ballet, held upright in a cage which dictates and constrains their movement."