Uber drivers have launched a landmark legal action against the ride-hailing company claiming they live in \u201cconstant fear\u201d of a \u201csoulless\u201d algorithm it uses to set pay and allocate jobs.<\/p>\n
Drivers from across Europe have joined the compensation claim that could run into billions of euros. It alleges an AI-powered pay-setting system breaches data protection laws and pushes down their earnings.<\/p>\n
The claim has been filed at Amsterdam\u2019s district court, where the $150bn (\u20ac130bn) San Francisco tech company has its European HQ. It is the first collective legal move of its kind, according to the European Trade Union Confederation.<\/p>\n
The case centres on an opaque \u201cblack box\u201d algorithm fed on information about drivers, which sets a personalised rate for each ride. Drivers fear it pushes down fares to the minimum they are willing to accept.<\/p>\n
Drivers say the algorithm has offered the same job to different people at different pay rates and offers them less for a return journey after a long trip because it calculates they will not want to come home empty.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is like someone watching you all the time and knowing about your weakness \u2014 the boss is the algorithm,\u201d said Mohammed Shirwa, a 41-year-old Uber driver in Rotterdam. \u201cAll the time the algorithm is learning about you and what you are willing to accept.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n So the prices go low but you are stuck. It knows you need the job.\n <\/p>\n
The Dutch data protection authority fined \u2060Uber \u20ac825m last month for deactivating driver \u2060accounts through automated systems without \u200badequate notice. Uber said it would appeal. The company is also planning to roll out driverless cars in European cities from London to Zagreb, initially with human supervisions.<\/p>\n
The legal case is being led by the Worker Info Exchange, a campaign group whose founder, James Farrar, secured a UK supreme court ruling that Uber drivers should have worker rights.<\/p>\n
Relating to about 241,000 drivers across the EU and the UK, the claim alleges that Uber has unlawfully used automated decision-making, including profiling, in dynamically setting pay and allocating work.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit, which also claims the company unlawfully used driver data to train its AI models, is seeking damages for affected drivers and an injunction to halt the conduct which it claims breaches GDPR data regulations.<\/p>\n
Uber\u2019s chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, said in 2023: \u201cI think that what we can do better is targeting of different trips to different drivers based on their preferences or based on behavioural patterns that they\u2019re showing us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Uber said it did not adjust the price offered for a trip based on an individual driver\u2019s behaviour and that a history of accepting or rejecting trips was not used to personalise pay offers. Instead, it said, dynamic pricing allowed it to increase pay on less attractive trips, boosting a driver\u2019s earning potential.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we haven\u2019t seen the claim yet, we categorically reject the allegations,\u201d an Uber spokesperson said. \u201cThe Uber app uses real-time information about the trip such as journey, duration and destination to calculate fares.<\/p>\n
\u201cDrivers see their earnings and where a trip is going before they decide whether to accept it. The vast majority of total fares continue to go where they belong: into drivers\u2019 pockets, and the percentage that Uber keeps from fares has remained relatively flat.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n The Guardian\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Uber drivers have launched a landmark legal action against the ride-hailing company claiming they live in \u201cconstant fear\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,289,3498,290,18,19,17,94952,82],"class_list":["post-671988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-taxi","tag-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117212074579343640","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}