At my Mardi Gras party, many topics of conversation taxied out to the runway, but the room only cleared one for takeoff. My upstairs neighbor tried to get everyone to say who they would vote for, but everyone looked at her like she’d passed gas. Religion came up since many of us were imbibing before Lent, but my next-door neighbor, who is a self-professed communist, and his they/them girlfriend just stared demurely. Then, someone brought up AI. All the side conversations disappeared. When the people out by the fire came in to get another drink, they stayed inside.
I listened as much as two beers and a shot allowed, then stuck my oar in.
“We got a new time clock that uses facial recognition. It’s overkill. We’re a shipyard, for crying out loud.”
“I’d quit before I used that.” Someone said.
“No, you wouldn’t. Like everyone else, I’d walk you down and sign you up. Even the old timers who I thought might put up a fight are enrolled."
The shipyard owners had hired a new person to manage our accounting department. The new Financial Controller rode into the shipyard on her Mustang, which was a convertible, and gunned down the old payroll system, proving to the hired hands that there was a new sheriff in town.
After Techy installed the new time clock she’d ordered, he told me, “It moves.”
It looked static hanging on the wall, but something caught my eye when I turned to walk away. Behind a little clear bubble, the camera on it was tracking my movements. “Oh, that’s creepy,” I said to no one—well, no one except whoever was on the other side of the camera.
My first thought was, I’m glad I’m not an hourly employee. But after reading a terse email from the Financial Controller that told me I was an Admin on the new machine and to report for training in an hour, I began to wonder if I’d dodged a bullet after all.
“We need to enroll you,” the trainer said. There I was, clicking “accept” instead of reading the tiny text on the screen. People were waiting, after all. It took a picture of my face; more specifically, I was to learn later, my eyes. And afterward, I thought, that happened fast. I was not expecting any of this.
One by one, I brought employees to register them for the time clock. Each one also hit “accept” without reading the fine print.
“Wow! Those are my eyes,” an employee said. He took out his cell phone and took a picture of what was on the screen. It was true. Underneath his portrait were two pictures of his eyes. They were in black and white and had always looked like a border to me. “That is so creepy.”
“I don’t like this, Nate. I don’t like this,” another employee said. “Why do we need this? We’re a shipyard, for crying out loud. Have you read about these things? They get hacked constantly, and there goes all your data.”
My brain filled with woe-is-me thoughts. How many battles am I supposed to fight at work? My last job fired me for not complying with their mandates. This is how the world is going; you can’t stop it.
Then I read the fine print. Essentially, AI will convert your unique features into an algorithm that will be stored and used to identify you. This is a form of biometrics. We are evil. Or something along those lines.
“I don’t know what to do about it,” I confessed to my Mardi Gras guests.
“Unionize,” my next-door neighbor, the self-professed communist, said with such enthusiasm I was surprised he didn’t add, “comrade.”
Other suggestions included throwing it in the ship canal, bashing it with a hammer, or cutting its wires.
After my guests left, I poured myself one last drink and sat beside the dying campfire. I puffed on a cigar, stared at the embers, and thought about what to do. I did not have time to research how dangerous or awful these things can be, and spewing facts is rarely persuasive these days; anyone can summon a list of facts to support any position at the touch of a screen.
In the morning, my head hurt, and my voice was hoarse, and I thought, a lot of good all that stewing did. Little did I know that feeling and sounding rough was the exact combination I needed.
Many of the employees I had enrolled could not use the time clock because it would not recognize them. The support staff brushed off my concerns and said we needed more light. Techy put in higher-wattage light bulbs and a second overhead light. Everyone who approached the time clock had to squint, which didn’t help capture pictures of their eyes.
The trainer, via video call, spoke to one of our employees who could not clock in. “This works every time. You see, once it gets to the picture portion, it will recognize — huh, I’ve never seen that error message before.”
He had me log out and log back in. Unplug the machine and plug it back in. He had the employee try without his glasses. Then, with his glasses. He unenrolled him, then reenrolled him. He had him try typing in his employee ID without using the leading zeros.
“You haven’t had him stand on one foot yet,” I said in a gravelly I-stayed-up-late-smoking-a-cigar voice.
“Have the employee type his ID number in the badge number box.”
“No,” I said. “This employee has work that he needs to do, and we aren’t going to keep him from doing it any longer.” I sent the employee away. Then I told the Financial Controller, The Payroll Manager, and the Support Staff. “This time clock is not working. It does not work for almost a third of our workforce, and you do not know how to make it work. What are our options?”
It turns out the company also offered a simplified kiosk version of its time clock without facial recognition, but its sales staff neglected to tell anyone in our accounting department about it.
“We’re switching to the kiosk,” I said. The Financial Controller and the Payroll Manager agreed. Over the next few days, I convinced the owners that a traditional kiosk where employees typed in their IDs met our needs better and worked with Techy to install it.
We didn't unionize, and the facial recognition time clock was shipped back in one piece. Instead, I exploited new technology's Achilles heel: It overpromises and underdelivers. That I smelled like smoke and sounded like death didn’t hurt; for crying out loud, I work in a shipyard.
Tugboat under construction, March 2024.
One of my favorite posts yet!