--- title: "AI Is Giving Your Boss Tools to Be More Monstrous Than Ever Before" description: "Workplaces are becoming havens of AI surveillance, an issue which is slowly destroying workplace autonomy, trust, and dignity." date: "2026-05-12" modified: "2026-05-12" authors: - name: "Joe Wilkins" job_title: "Correspondent" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jwilkins" url: "https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-boss-surveillance" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Ethics" - "Future Society" - "Privacy" --- # AI Is Giving Your Boss Tools to Be More Monstrous Than Ever Before ![A man in a suit and striped tie is leaning forward on a table, angrily pointing and shouting. Around the table, other people in business attire appear tense and withdrawn, with one woman looking down pensively and a man sitting with his head bowed. The background is tinted yellow, emphasizing the intense atmosphere. Glasses of water and a laptop are on the table.]() *Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images* The debate raging about AI's future consequences, with a complete AI automation apocalypse on one side and a resplendent AI utopia on the other, has overlooked one tiny detail: the tech is already making workers' lives hell at this very minute. According [to the *Guardian*](), at least one-third of UK employers already report using "bossware," meaning employee monitoring software increasingly integrated with AI. In the US, that number is even higher, with an estimated [61 percent]() of workplaces using AI analytics software to calculate worker productivity. This kind of management-by-software has [long been prevalent]() in industrial society to some extent — since the 2010s, Amazon warehouse workers have had to deal with [hand-scanners]() that track their bathroom breaks, for example — but the rise of AI means bosses are increasingly utilizing the latest and greatest machine learning tools to [maximize worker productivity](). As Royal Docks School of Business and Law professor Nazrul Islam pinned pined in a recent [editorial in the *Guardian*](), the most immediate threat to the workers of the world isn't mass automation kicking people out of the workplace, but the crushing effects of AI on those within it. The consequences are numerous: it engenders a widening workplace skill gap, erasure of workplace autonomy, and ever-worsening conditions. As Islam puts it, "many jobs will remain in the future, but they will be more pressured, more fragmented and less human." Sure enough, AI is already degrading workplace conditions around the world. In the US, [fast food workers]() and Amazon drivers are increasingly surveilled by these systems. Office workers are being coerced to [work harder with AI]() and subject themselves to [constant AI monitoring]() — or else find themselves on the streets in one of the [most brutal hiring markets]() since the Great Recession. "The choice about how AI will reshape work is not being made in Silicon Valley boardrooms or summit speeches," Islam observes. "It is being made right now, workplace by workplace, across Britain and around the world." So though the [jury may still be out]() on whether mass AI immiseration is in our future, don't forget to check in with the present, where there are plenty of horrors lurking in the mundanity of each and every shift. **More on workplace surveillance:** *[Amazon Tells Driver to Keep Delivering Packages Amid Raging Wildfire]()* ## Author At Futurism, I focus on the intersection of technology and power — examining the economics, history, and politics behind today’s dystopian headlines. As a writer, I’m interested in topics ranging from AI’s impact on labor to startups nobody asked for. My prior work includes bylines in Jacobin, Verso, and Blue Labyrinths. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Forbes, The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Time, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Verge, and Wired. I grew up in Michigan, attending Central Michigan University as well as Ball State University, where I earned a master of music. I now live in Brooklyn with my girlfriend and our cat Ziti. On weekends, you can find me hunched over a cold pint arguing geopolitics with the other transplants. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()