Amazon's patent for caged workers was a "bad" idea, admits a manager

Amazon, which has been criticized for treating warehouse workers as "robots", is now turning away criticism for a 2016 patent that offered to house workers in cages.

The patent was highlighted in a recent article by two AI researchers, who wrote that the drawing illustrated "an extraordinary illustration of the alienation of workers, a critical moment in the relationship between humans and machines".

Although the prospect of placing a worker in a cage is certainly not good, the purpose of the patent was to focus on employee safety rather than confinement. The caged mobile workspace has been designed to ensure the safety of people entering the warehouses where robots are zooming, pushing shelves of products ordered by Amazon customers.

An Amazon executive, Dave Clark, wrote on Twitter that the company does not plan to use the design.

"Sometimes even bad ideas are patented," Clark, vice president of operations at Amazon, wrote in response to a Seattle Times article on the patent. "This has never been used and we have no plans to use it."

Sometimes even bad ideas are patented. This has never been used and we have no plans to use it. We have developed a much better solution, namely a small vest that associates can wear, so that all nearby robotic training units stop moving.

– Dave Clark (@davehclark) September 8, 2018

An Amazon spokeswoman said speculation about the patent was "wrong". She added: "Like many companies, we are filing a number of patent applications looking into the future."

New York University's Amnesty International researchers Kate Crawford and Share Foundation director Vladan Joler described the patent as a symbol of a "unevenly distributed dystopia" where comfort is scarce.

"But the majority of the pyramids are made from the dark tunnels of mines, radioactive waste lakes, discarded shipping containers and industrial factory dormitories," they added.

Even as a concept, design hits some consumers at a time when wealthier Americans are getting higher wages and incomes, while many low-income and middle-class families struggle to support themselves. Automation – like robots used in Amazon's warehouse – has been charged obviously middle class professions and pushing workers into less stable, lower paying jobs.

Conditions of work in the warehouses of Amazon was the subject of surveillance earlier this year in "Hired", a book on low-wage work in the UK by journalist James Bloodworth, who worked undercover in one of the retailer's English warehouses. He portrayed a workplace where workers are treated as "robots", an assertion disputed by Amazon.