All courses / AI Boss / Module 2 / Chapter 5
Learning objectives
After the lesson the participant can:
- Map the platform loop of allocation, pay, rating and deactivation onto the management functions.
- Explain what distinguished the accepted human decision from the rejected ones in the Amsterdam judgment.
- Describe the three steps by which an internal dispatcher comes to behave like a platform.
- Benchmark an internal shift-offer or allocation system against Articles 7 to 12 of the Platform Work Directive.
Key concepts
- Algorithmic wage discrimination
- Dubal's term for using granular data on location, individual behaviour, demand and supply to produce variable, personalised and unpredictable hourly pay for broadly similar work, including through the allocation of work itself.
- Blended score
- Ratings and behavioural metrics combined into one number, as in Foodinho's excellence score. The rider cannot tell which input lowered it, and an evaluation whose inputs cannot be seen cannot be corrected when it is wrong.
- Hidden rating
- Acceptance history that becomes an input when a feature offers shifts first to people who usually accept. It is M2 Evaluation that no one designed, and fewer offers then reach M3 Consequence through hours and pay.
- Human decision on deactivation
- Article 10(5) of the Platform Work Directive requires that any decision to restrict, suspend or terminate an account, or of equivalent detriment, be taken by a human being.
Interactive exercises
Do them here and get feedback at once. Choose a card and then where it belongs, or drag it.
Interactive exercise 1 · Match
Who decided what about platforms
Match each court, authority or law from Chapter 5 with what it decided or introduced.
Interactive exercise 2 · Scenario
The supplier does not answer
Apply the chapter's benchmark of an internal dispatcher against the Platform Work Directive to the situation below.
Teaching plan
| 15 min | The teacher draws the loop of Figure 5.1 and places on it the UK Supreme Court's description of Uber's controls and the weights of Foodinho's excellence score. |
| 15 min | Case reading in pairs: the Amsterdam judgment, the Bologna order and the Garante's fines. Each pair states what the system did and where the human stood. |
| 10 min | Presentation of Chapter III of the Platform Work Directive article by article, and of the three steps by which an internal open-shift module follows the platform pattern. |
| 25 min | Exercise: groups benchmark an internal dispatcher against the Directive, using PWD-BENCH-NR-SW-01 as the model. |
| 10 min | Debrief comparing Nordvik's contractual remedy for a supplier default with Hansa's negotiated parameter and daily cap for a built agent. |
Discussion
- The organisation chart showed humans in the loop for all four Amsterdam drivers. What evidence would your organisation be able to produce today of what a reviewer actually considered?
- Dubal and Cook and colleagues reach different conclusions about platform pay, yet the chapter says transparency of parameters is a remedy both sides can support. Why?
- At Hansa Mutual no rule weights throughput, yet fast handlers receive more claims. How should an organisation treat an effect that no rule states but the design produces?
Written exercise
Exercise · 25 minutes
A Platform Work Directive benchmark of an internal dispatcher
Take an internal system that offers or allocates work: ShiftWise open-shift offers, Hansa Mutual's claims-triage agent, or one in your own organisation. Although the Directive does not apply, use its Chapter III as a benchmark. Map the loop and record the degree per function. Inventory the behavioural data kept (acceptances, declines, response times), with purpose, viewers and retention. Draft the written question to the supplier on whether any feature uses past behaviour to order or filter offers. Write the main parameters in plain language, name the human decider for any outcome that restricts access to work or pay, and set a review path with a written answer within two weeks.
Deliverable: A benchmark table by article (7, 9, 10(5), 11, 10(1) and 12) with result, detail and action for each finding, plus the residual risk and the evaluation date.
Self-test
Choose an answer to see whether it is right, or open the answer below each question.
Why did the Amsterdam Court of Appeal accept real human intervention for one of the four deactivated Uber drivers?
Show the answer
C. Because Uber had interviewed that driver before the deactivation
For three drivers Uber had not shown how the human factor influenced the decision and they had no chance to state their view; for the fourth, whom Uber had interviewed, the court accepted real human intervention.What did the supplier's default for ShiftWise open-shift offers store, according to Nordvik Region's benchmark, and what did AIDR-0625 decide?
Show the answer
A. Offers, responses and response times per person for 24 months; retention was cut to 90 days for dispute handling, with no reporting per person
The benchmark found the log as a gap against Article 7 and reduced retention to 90 days; the feature ordering offers by past acceptance existed but was switched off and stays off by contract.The Tribunal of Bologna declared Deliveroo Italia's booking system potentially discriminatory. What was the mechanism?
Show the answer
D. A late cancellation lowered a rider's standing whatever the reason, disadvantaging riders absent for a strike, illness or the care of a child
Access to booking windows depended on reliability and participation statistics blind to reasons, which the court framed as indirect discrimination. The chapter uses it as the warning for acceptance history becoming a hidden rating.