Mandatory “happiness”: the facial regime that Chinese companies apply to their workers

Happiness in the office is one of the elements that every company should seek, in order to bring peace of mind to each of its employees and thus improve the productivity of the company. Many organizations seek to achieve this almost utopian situation through work models that They promote the personal and family development of their employees as well as their professional development and fulfillment.

However, it is impossible to ensure that every worker has a smile on their face during the hours they spend in the office; they should force them.

Well, that seems to be the plan of Canon, one of the most important tech companies in the world, which has developed a strategy that may seem abusive or controlling: in the facilities of Canon Information Technology in China, a series of cameras have been installed which, with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI), recognizes the smiles of employees. This way, the company makes sure that only workers who show a smile for the camera are the ones who can enter its offices. The worker who wants to participate in a meeting will have to smile yes or yes.

But that’s not all. In a recent report by the Financial Times, measures taken by Chinese companies against the privacy and time of employees during their professional activities were highlighted. For example, employers judiciously and constantly monitor the history of applications used by workers; make a tracking movements outside of the company’s physical facilities and they even use surveillance cameras to make sure people stick to their lunch break.

While this type of news may surprise people on this side of the world, it seems that this kind of strategy is no longer seen as abuse in the Chinese workplace; in fact, they seem to have normalized.

In 2020, Canon Information Technology formalized and made public the announcement of the creation and use of “smile recognition” cameras in order to improve the management of the human team in its facilities. However, what seemed to be the “chronicle of an announced death” did not take on greater relevance with its employees. The news went unnoticed, demonstrating that labor control tools seem to have become the norm in this country.

“Algorithms and artificial intelligence do not replace workers. Instead, management is empowered by these technologies, ”Nick Srnicek, professor at King’s College London, told the Financial Times.

In short, practices are becoming normalized in which Artificial Intelligence acts as a prosecutor, judge and executioner of workers. According to experts, the purpose of AI is not just to control workers, but to steal their humanity. It makes people so dependent on their work that by speeding up the processes of the machine, it is the employees who realize that they are the ones who have to adapt to the technology, not the technology to them.

“Technologies increase the pace of people working with machines rather than the other way around, as happened during the industrial revolution in the 18th century.”

With all of this, “smile recognition” cameras don’t end up being one of the worst evils in employee surveillance. In the obviousness of its control lies an advantage which the workers can profit from. On the contrary, other techniques such as monitoring tools integrated into office suites, which go unnoticed by people and who grew up with the pandemic, are the most latent threats but the least detected by workers on the planet.

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