Elevator pitch for VCs would be about machine learning - neural networks generating consumer head nodding behaviors that match the read phrases, as well as rising simulated body temperature in righteous awe or anger upon "reading" certain pieces of spam. And how all that behavioral data is somehow valuable (lol).

You can have virtual cubicles full of imaginary AI-generated people automating bureaucratic busywork being generated by AI management algorithms.

Maybe I should write a novel about this. (Or am I too late?)

I figure it's an arms race that will play out in the software space. More generally, it's deep-fakes vs deep-fake-detectors.

Had the joy to see some contractors at work. The webcam is recording 24/7 to ensure their face is in front of the screen.

If the employee looks away for a second, the screen flashes something about no user being present.

If somebody else shows up in the field of view, for example me walking by, the screen flashes something about an unauthorized user.

The session is locked out after a few notifications.

They're trash.

This is what it looks like for students: use your laptop webcam to scan the room with your webcam, remove anything deemed suspicious; provide proof of identity (student id), wait for the software to register your face, name, and identity; test opens take test, do not look down or it locks, do not look away or it locks, do not refer to your notes or it locks, do not have people walk behind you or it locks, do not have pets walk behind you or it locks, do not have posters of movies behind you or it registers as a person and locks, do not accidentally click another tab or window or it locks, do not use any of the built-in windows accessibility tools or certain 3rd party accessibility tools (dragon software) or it locks, do not use a mac or it locks; fail test.

Single parents, individuals living with many people in the home, and anyone who does not have access to an isolated quiet, alone work space is screwed.

And it's completely asinine. Just ridiculous.

You have to onboard user accounts to them, install the authentication software on a laptop, and it will open a remote desktop to an AWS workspace. The session is constantly tracking the user's face and gets terminated if they look away for a minute.

Contractors are disconnected regularly because their face stopped being recognized, or they can't login in the first place after 5 tries.

Recall one contractor that contacted support because they couldn't login, support told him that their face was too dark.

The hell did I just read?! Can't tell if this is satire or real at his point but anyway let me just beat your employee tracking system by propping up a photo of my face in front of the webcam.

Wait, is your fancy system looking for features of life like facial twitches and eye movement to not be fooled by a photo?

Fine, here's a deepfaked avatar of my face acting alive powered by nvidia's latest deep learning magic.

See where this is going?

Was sent a link for an online test (hackerrank if I remember right) for which I needed to keep my camera ON.

Unless this is some kind of top-secret government consultancy thing that is totally unappropriate.

It's minimum wage, hourly contracting with no benefits.

Since all you really need to get started is a laptop, there are rather millions of more or less atomized software shops and developers attached to other industries, other streams of revenue and capital, other entirely disconnected cultures and social norms.

What really scares me is the number of people that adopt this strange Panglossian view dismissing every abuse of power as a one-off that cannot possibly reveal widespread systemic failures.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel...

And no - CCTV is not widespread at all. There's far more CCTV in the UK than there is in the EU where I live now.

States do indeed issue local IDs. There is no common EU ID card and no common EU passport.

There isn't even a common immigration database for Schengen - although that's planned for 2023. (It was supposed to be 2022, but it's been delayed by a year.)