The Rise of Emotional Surveillance
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/05/worker-surveillance-emotion-ai/687029/?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_medium=social&utm_content=edit-promo
The Rise of Emotional Surveillance
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/05/worker-surveillance-emotion-ai/687029/?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_medium=social&utm_content=edit-promo
2 Comments
Ellen Cushing: “The good news, for me at least, is that the computer thinks I have a nice personality. According to an app called MorphCast, I was, in a recent meeting with my boss, generally ‘amused,’ ‘determined,’ and ‘interested,’ though—sue me—occasionally ‘impatient.’ MorphCast, you see, purports to glean insights into the depths and vagaries of human emotion using AI …
“The bad news is that software now purports to glean insights into the depths and vagaries of human emotion using AI, and it is coming to watch you. If it isn’t already: Morphcast, for example, has licensed its technology to a mental-health app, a program that monitors schoolchildren’s attention, and McDonald’s, which launched a promotional campaign in Portugal that scanned app users’ faces and offered them personalized coupons based on their (supposed) mood. It is one of many, many such companies doing similar work—the industry term is *emotion AI* or sometimes *affective computing* …
“Every successful technology needs to find a problem that people are willing to pay money to solve. In the case of emotion AI, that problem appears largely, so far, to be worker performance and productivity, especially in customer service and blue-collar labor. If you’ve ever been warned that your call ‘is being monitored for quality-assurance purposes,’ chances are good that the person on the other end is being assessed by emotion AI: The insurance giant MetLife, like many other businesses, uses software to monitor call-center agents’ pitch and tone of voice. Trucking companies use eyeball trackers, high-sensitivity recording equipment, and brain-wave scanners to find signs of driver distress or fatigue. Burger King is piloting an AI chatbot embedded in employee headsets that will evaluate their interactions for friendliness. Her name is Patty.”
Read more: [https://theatln.tc/CxryQdcc](https://theatln.tc/CxryQdcc)
What benefit exactly do the overlords think they are getting out of electron-microscopic micromanagement?
Is this just an expensive subscription way to threaten your employees livelihoods, or a toilet you can flush money down to make your employees hate you?
This shit is going to provide actually 0 real benefit.