Office Work Is Inhumane: Every Employee’s Move Is Being Monitored
Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – “You are being watched.” That is the complaint now being heard in workplaces around the world. AI technology is no longer just carrying out tasks; it is continuously monitoring employees’ words, movements and interactions, CNBC Indonesia reported on Monday (19 October 2026.
In the UK, membership-based legal services company The Co-op is reportedly using an AI model from OpenAI to monitor all its employees’ telephone conversations. The system analyses more than 50 different aspects of each conversation, then automatically gives it a pass or fail rating. Employees are monitored for hours every day, with not a single word missed.
“You are being watched. This is different from being listened to occasionally for compliance. Every word spoken, every time you speak, is recorded. It feels as though we are living in a world that is no longer humane,” one employee told The Guardian.
The company defended the practice, saying that artificial intelligence is merely a support tool and does not make the final decisions.
Unions, however, rejected that explanation. “An unaccountable system should not be someone’s boss. These workers deserve respect, not to be assessed endlessly by a machine.”
The situation in the United States is not much different. A survey by ExpressVPN, cited by Futurism, found that 61 per cent of workplaces already use AI analytics software to measure employee performance.
Burger King, for example, requires employees to wear listening devices connected to AI to monitor the friendliness of their service and issue direct instructions through automated messages. Meta, the owner of Instagram and WhatsApp, once introduced a system that recorded every keystroke and employees’ screen displays to train its AI. The system was eventually discontinued after personal data was also exposed.
Observers warn that artificial intelligence is changing the nature of work itself. Rather than replacing workers, the technology may instead increase their workload and intensify surveillance. Every interaction is turned into numerical data that can be compared, averaged and assessed without end.
The approach has been criticised for potentially making workplace standards inhumane. Machines do not tire or have moods. If they are used to assess people, employees may eventually adapt their behaviour to appear favourable to the machine.