Surveillance Downsides

Cameras, keystroke monitoring, eye movement monitoring, and more. When companies switched from the office to working from home, a number of companies added surveillance systems. These systems can increase productivity but only when the right choices are made. The problem is that such monitoring increased cheating and breaking of rules. Surveillance can make things worse, not better. The costs are now being acknowledged. Surveillance has a real downside.

Some people want to control others. In fear, they will add rules, consolidate power, buy more surveillance technology, and hire more enforcers. Even technology that wasn't intended to be used for surveillance will be used. The social media companies collect huge amounts of data on every person. Mobile games feed information back to servers which can be sold. HOA's can have people checking up on every home in the neighborhood.

Often such surveillance of employees is done for "productivity." Public surveillance is done in the name of "morality." Rights are stripped away in "the name of protecting the children." The intent of such surveillance is to comfort. Those with power want comfort that others won't harm them. But surveillance rarely works completely. People will find ways to avoid being monitored. And the costs always come.

The cost of surveillance is trust. People recognize that they are not being trusted and they lose trust in those who are doing the surveillance. The lack of trust results in lower innovation and a reduced standard of living. When employees feel the lack of trust, they are more likely to cheat, take more breaks, and work out ways to give false information to surveillance. They are far less likely to be "engaged" or committed to the company resulting in lower productivity.

Surveillance can boost productivity but only when management is making correct choices. Nobody is correct all the time. When management is wrong in such environments, often no one will prevent things from getting worse.

There are always some who break the rules either by accident or deliberately. When these rule breakers are in power, they will always give themselves a pass. Corporations often protect managers who break the rules. Governments slap "top secret" on documents that expose politicians making mistakes or breaking the rules. The youngsters in DOGE broke many security rules exposing national secrets with impunity. Church after church have been exposed as protecting abusers.

Unequal treatment always results in alienation. Many employees rebel when they are under surveillance but see managers getting away with breaking the rules. Much social strife comes from unequal treatment.

Our culture is highly innovative and competitive when we have freedoms and people trust that justice is being applied to all including the managers and politicians.

AI Boom Hiding Real Problem

Albania recently announced that a government minister is being generated by AI. Business CEOs are believing that AI can replace junior people and many recent college graduates are having trouble finding jobs. People are believing the hype about Artificial Intelligence and overlooking the real problem. We need real solutions based on humanity and creativity. The more AI advances, the more human traits of creativity, integrity, empathy, and trust, become differentiators and the way that businesses will make money. As aways, those that don't follow the herd will find paths that the herd does not.

The lack of human traits in business is not due to a lack of intelligence, but rather a lack of structures to use human capabilities properly. AI is dumbing business down, not making it better. Assuming that robots can outperform humans in new situations has been proven wrong time after time. Robots can only do what a human has figured out already. Humans can find solutions to problems that robots can't.

There is a saying that any business problem that can be solved with money isn't a real problem. Similarly, business problems that can be solved by AI aren't the real problems. AI can only present solutions that have been tried elsewhere. However, putting AI in the hands of a trained human who can use the suggestions to spark real creativity can solve problems. Humans can use AI to see what other people have done in similar situations breaking through the preconceptions that block people from true creativity.

Human creativity abounds when people feel safe, interact with new situations and with new cultures, and break out of their limitations.

Risky World

While some people had no problems with Robo Taxis, a number of incidents are being reported including hitting other cars and driving in circles. Tesla taxis in Austin had a number of incidents which is more than the competitors.