Chris Stokel-Walker

Companies are increasingly recording workers’ physical and digital movements to train AI systems and humanoid robots intended to automate their jobs. In India, garment workers wore headsets to capture manufacturing data, while China’s highly automated factories illustrate the broader push toward lights-out production. Meta’s Model Capability Initiative sought to collect employees’ keystrokes, clicks, mouse movements and screenshots, prompting a petition from more than 1,500 workers over privacy, consent and job-security concerns. Meta paused the programme after unauthorized access to the data was discovered. Critics argue that such systems reproduce existing patterns rather than provide genuine critical thinking, while the initiative signals a wider and troubling shift toward treating human workers as sources of data for their own replacement.

The COVID-19 lockdowns sharply increased children’s gaming time, providing social connection and entertainment but also intensifying problematic use for some. Warning signs of gaming disorder include gaming taking precedence over sleep, hygiene, eating, schoolwork and relationships, as well as severe distress or aggression when access is restricted. UK treatment services reported rising demand, though referrals remain very small compared with the country’s roughly 12 million child and young adult gamers. Experts stress that addiction is defined less by a fixed number of hours than by the harmful effect gaming has on everyday life, and recommend specialist support when families cannot regain control.