It's probably hard to imagine that you are the target of spycraft, but spying on employees is the next frontier of military AI. Surveillance techniques familiar to authoritarian dictatorships have now been repurposed to target American workers. Over the past decade, a few dozen companies have emerged to sell your employer subscriptions for services like "open source intelligence," "reputation management," and "insider threat assessment"--tools often originally developed by defense contractors for intelligence uses. As deep learning and new data sources have become available over the past few years, these tools have become dramatically more sophisticated. With them, your boss may be able to use advanced data analytics to identify labor organizing, internal leakers, and the company's critics.

Support for unionization across the industry has held steady. About 53% said that game workers should unionize, while 13% said they shouldn't. The survey also asked workers if they or their colleagues have discussed unionizing at their company, to which 22% responded yes. Developers who had 15 years of experience or less were more likely to support unionization than those with 16 or more years of experience. Those who had 30 or more years of experience were least likely to support unionization.

Raven Software helps develop the popular Call of Duty franchise for Activision Blizzard. Recently, workers there staged a weeks-long walkout to protest layoffs. Raven Software helps develop the popular Call of Duty franchise for Activision Blizzard. Recently, workers there staged a weeks-long walkout to protest layoffs. Go back to LiveJournal (LiveJournal!), and read one of the earliest and most infamous accounts of working conditions at a large video game company -- a 2004 post written by the spouse of an Electronic Arts (EA) employee -- and you'll find in the comments a healthy debate about whether or not a union would work at a video game company.

At an industry conference for video game developers in late March, the thousands of lanyarded attendees could try new games, swap business cards and hear from experts on rendering realistic blood spatter. Or they could talk about unionizing. Hundreds joined a series of standing-room-only roundtables on the topic of organized labor, taking time away from the Game Developers Conference to brainstorm ways to build worker power in an industry that is almost entirely nonunion. Organizers with Game Workers Unite, a group that has sprung up in the last year to push for wall-to-wall unionization in the $43-billion game industry, kicked off each session with an icebreaker: "Damn the man." "Damn the man" for making designers work 100-hour weeks for months on end to deliver a game on time -- a practice known as "crunch" that often comes without overtime or bonus pay.

A screen, center, shows a professional video game competition between teams sitting on either side. Unionization of players is a big topic in the industry after several years of fast growth. A screen, center, shows a professional video game competition between teams sitting on either side. Unionization of players is a big topic in the industry after several years of fast growth. With threats of strikes and retaliatory layoffs, and no shortage of sniping on social media, a battle last winter had the stamps of a modern-day union war.