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Not just the logic but the ethics of these and why they do what they do. When I visited India recently I saw how algorithms run everything and there is a lot of discussion to figure out how it works.
“Information exchange is crucial because drivers have so little information about their job: why they’re getting paid; what they’re being paid; why they’re being matched to certain orders; why sometimes they get a lot of orders, sometimes they get none,” Rida Qadri, who studies algorithmic failures and frictions in the Global South, with a special focus on Indonesia, told Rest of World. “The more they know, the more drivers feel they can have mastery over their job, generally earn more, stay safe, etc. — information exchange is an important part of driver’s work then.”
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“The workers are knowledgeable in a lot of different ways — not about the algorithm or the variables that go into the algorithm — but they can tell you and speak fluently about surge pricing; they can tell you what is going to happen at nighttime or during rains or all of these different rhythms of the way that the algorithm works,” said Srujana Katta, a Ph.D. candidate at Oxford Internet Institute, who is currently researching the ride-hailing work and labor organizing in Hyderabad. “They are able to see the patterns even without knowing specifically the logic behind the algorithm.”
