Chinese consumers in cities like Beijing or Shanghai expect goods ordered online to be delivered not within the same day but the same hour - very often within 30 minutes or less. This is made possible by a perfectly digitized logistics platform - together with an army of low paid drivers under the command of powerful AIs. 

It is impossible for an outsider to imagine how much stress the humans in these systems experience every day. But via the Jeffrey Ding’s ChinaAI Newsletter (which we highly recommend!), we found an interesting thread on Twitter that gives you a terrifying glimpse into what it is like to work under an AI “boss”.

A complete translation of the Chinese article mentioned in the tweet can be found on Google Drive:

Delivery Drivers, Trapped in the System

Ele.me driver Zhu Dahe clearly remembered that it was one day in October 2019 – when he saw the system delivery time for an order, his hand holding the handlebar was sweaty: “2 kilometers, delivery within 30 minutes” – As someone who did food delivery in Beijing for two years, he knew that the previous shortest delivery time for the same distance was 32 minutes. But starting from that day, those two minutes were gone.

At about the same time, Meituan drivers also experienced similar “losing-time incidents.” A Meituan driver who specializes in running long-distance deliveries in Chongqing found that the delivery time for orders within the same distance had changed from 50 minutes to 35 minutes; his roommate also did deliveries, and his delivery time limit for 3 kilometers had also been reduced to 30 minutes.

This is not the first instance of when time disappeared from the system. (…)

Continue reading on Google Drive…