Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech The debate raging about AI’s future consequences, with a complete AI automation apocalypse on one side and a resplendent AI utopia on the other, has overlooked one tiny detail: the tech is already making workers’ lives hell at this very minute. According to the Guardian, at least one-third of UK employers already report using “bossware,” meaning employee monitoring software increasingly integrated with AI. In the US, that number is even higher, with an estimated 61 percent of workplaces using AI analytics software to calculate worker productivity. This kind of management-by-software has long been prevalent in industrial society to some extent — since the 2010s, Amazon warehouse workers have had to deal with hand-scanners that track their bathroom breaks, for example — but the rise of AI means bosses are increasingly utilizing the latest and greatest machine learning tools to maximize worker productivity. As Royal Docks School of Business and Law professor Nazrul Islam pinned pined in a recent editorial …