Uber has been hit with legal demands to stop using its artificial intelligence driven pay systems, which have been blamed for significantly reducing the incomes of the ride hailing app\u2019s drivers.<\/p>\n
A letter before action \u2013 sent to the US company by the non-profit foundation, Worker Info Exchange (WIE), on Wednesday \u2013 is understood to allege that the ride hailing app has breached European data protection law by varying driver pay rates through its controversial algorithm.<\/p>\n
James Farrar, the director of WIE, said: \u201cUber has leveraged artificial intelligence and machine learning to implement deeply intrusive and exploitative pay-setting systems that have damaged the livelihoods of thousands of drivers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThrough this collective action, we intend to get a fairer deal for drivers and ensure Uber is held financially accountable for the harm caused by this unlawful use of AI.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis case is \u2026 about securing transparent, fair and safe working conditions for all platform workers.\u201d<\/p>\n
The proposed legal case is expected to be filed in Amsterdam, where Uber is based in Europe. The moves come after the WIE partnered with Oxford University during the summer to publish research on Uber driver pay.<\/p>\n
The academic paper found that many Uber drivers were earning \u201csubstantially less\u201d an hour<\/a> \u2013 while the company was taking a significantly higher share of fares \u2013 since the ride hailing app introduced a \u201cdynamic pricing\u201d algorithm in 2023. Dynamic pricing variably sets pay for drivers and fares for passengers and is a later iteration of Uber\u2019s \u201csurge pricing\u201d, which increased fares during periods of peak demand.<\/p>\n The Oxford University research said: \u201cOur findings suggest that post-dynamic pricing, many aspects of Uber drivers\u2019 jobs have gotten worse. Average pay per hour on the app is stagnant, and is lower in real terms in the year following the introduction of dynamic pricing.\u201d<\/p>\n The WIE argued that Uber had trained its algorithms \u201cby using the drivers\u2019 own historic personal data by observing their working practices.<\/p>\n \u201cUnder the GDPR<\/a>, drivers are entitled to demand that Uber stop using this technology, revert to the previous method of transparent pay-setting with a human in the loop, and compensate the drivers for their losses.\u201d<\/p>\n An Uber spokesperson said: \u201cDrivers choose Uber because we offer flexibility over where and when they work, and transparency over every trip they take \u2013 including the fare, destination, and their own earnings, before they decide whether to accept. The study WIE collaborated on is not accurate and relies on incomplete and selective data.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Business Today<\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cThe researchers themselves admit that their analysis \u2018does not enable [them] to isolate the causal effect of dynamic pricing on pay\u2019, making any conclusions about driver earnings misleading. We are proud that thousands of drivers continue to make the positive choice to work on Uber as passenger demand and trips continue to grow.\u201d<\/p>\n The WIE alleges that, while Uber announced dynamic pricing in 2023, the \u201clegal harm\u201d commenced in 2020 with \u201cupfront pricing\u201d \u2013 where a passenger would be quoted a set fare for a trip.<\/p>\n The workers\u2019 foundation added that if Uber failed to comply with its \u201cdemands to cease these practices and compensate affected drivers\u201d, it intended to \u201cbring collective proceedings before the Amsterdam district court under the Netherlands\u2019 collective redress law\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Uber has been hit with legal demands to stop using its artificial intelligence driven pay systems, which have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-295526","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}