Book - Chapter One: The Last Mile To Awakening
Full Dashclosure, Awakening from the human exploitation of DoorDash Singularity
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The ground seems to shift under our feet these days. Today, November 30, 2022, as I prepared to release the first sections of Full Dashclosure, DoorDash announced an unexpected and surprising layoff. "This morning I woke up to find out that DoorDash had made the difficult decision to say goodbye to some of our wonderful teammates, 1250 to be exact," wrote Holly H., on the LinkedIn platform. DoorDash has been hiring, expanding and recruiting aggressively, until now. I wonder if any ex-employees would be interested in talking with me, on or off the record? I've reached out to a number of them in the past few weeks, but to no avail thus far.
Why should you care about DoorDash and the gig economy? First, a riddle to prepare your thoughts for the information that follows:
Question: As a conscious being - what's worse than being ruthlessly exploited by data science and artificial intelligence?
Answer: Being insidiously exploited by data science and artificial intelligence in a gamified world, with neither your knowledge, nor consent.
DoorDash's innovation is neither in technology nor logistics, as their C-Level executives brazenly boast of in their vapid, vacuous and vague public performances. Performances that are tailored for an audience of fawning analysts, careless investors, technically-motivated sycophants and many wide-eyed admirers of their “unicorn startup” fairytale.
There exists an implicit requirement that any business enterprise at it's core be strategically and operationally legitimate, rather than deceptive, predatory and exploitative. DoorDash fails this requirement. Neither has DoorDash made positive advances in the broad and rapidly-expanding category of artificial intelligence. Every technologist is accountable for the business applications and results they create. Do good. You’re good! If you codify evil through data science and artificial intelligence, then you're fueling the singularity and threatening human survival; that’s bad.
In my research, no regulatory body or academic institution in the world has correctly identified what DoorDash is really doing and its plans to rapidly expand its scheme to desperate and deceived victims around the world. DoorDash Corporation was founded in 2013, and through the June 1, 2022 acquisition of Helsinki, Finland-based Wolt, today operates in 27 nations. That DoorDash has avoided any relevant scrutiny of their immoral and fictional business model is hard to believe, yet factual. Such hideous truth lies in their scheme, that in researching this book, I've literally screamed out to no one and everyone within hearing distance, "The horror!"
Full Dashclosure will detail the DoorDash Singularity, what it is, what it means and most importantly, the devastating human impacts and societal externalities of their corporate free rider madness. A powerful, market-dominating free rider like DoorDash causes extensive damage, along with unmanageable societal and economic disruptions. Ultimately, failures of exploited public and private markets will result from the free-rider’s extensive utilization of both resources and infrastructures, which they neither own nor pay for.
In the process of researching DoorDash, I was challenged to navigate a massive maze of out-of context statistics, misleading narratives and whitewashed corporate positioning. Assembling the puzzle-pieces of their scheme required information gleaned from multiple intentionally-disaggregated systems and vertical applications, and a fine-screened sifting though countless devious details creatively couched in technical jargon, mind-bending legalese and nauseating business terminology.
The DoorDash Corporation, its founders, investors, associates and collaborators will become infamously known for foisting upon the people of the world insidious technology-driven human rights violations; initiating an existential threat to human existence culminating in the DoorDash Singularity. The DoorDash Singularity which will be defined extensively in the following chapters, features a data science-driven system in which artificial intelligence exploits isolated, deceived and coerced humans, fully without their knowledge. It began as many futurists have predicted such a reality-blending combination of humanity and artificial intelligence; a singularity, would; absent any announcement.
For both your edification and comprehension of this new challenge we together must confront, I’ll communicate with satire, humor, art and music. I want you to both enjoy reading this book and be inspired to take the individual steps necessary for positive change and conscious action. More importantly, I hope we connect on a deeper level through this shared space and present moment, and the arts have unique properties for spawning such powerfully-human possibilities. You’re the leaders and the remedy to this societal sickness; the only remedy. The alternative is called “insanity,” and we need no more of that in our world.
Politicians, regulators and bureaucrats don't even understand the issues of the gig economy and artificial intelligence, much less do they have the power or political will to fix such issues within the bounds of our global economic and governmental systems. Corporations control the governments of our world. Will you allow them to rule your mind and extinguish your consciousness?
I believe we can awaken to a better way. We can awaken to see our own thoughts for what they are, merely thoughts. We can consciously recognize our thoughts for their profound limitations in understanding our true being; our value beyond money and labor; beyond our identities, possessions and bodily forms. Awakened workers can fully realize their unique human value, the considerable power of their dedicated labor and finally, the universally precious gifts of human consciousness and being; thus better comprehending their value in the global marketplace of labor.
Each of us must be properly equipped to make fully conscious decisions regarding our participation in any artificial intelligence-driven application created to exploit us to an extent beyond our comprehension; beyond our imaginations, and as no human-run system ever could. We are as vulnerable as kittens in the wake of artificial intelligence designed to exploit our human frailties and systems.
Last-mile-delivery tasks are simple in concept, but they’re neither easy nor cheap to complete. High stress, insufficient training, incompetent support services and deceptive compensation models characterize the daily lives of workers in the rapidly-expanding global gig economy. Gig workers engage in the completion of tasks joined to the relatively-new worker status of “Independent contractor,” clarified most recently on January 6, 2021. Independent contractors accessing gigs through smartphone-based mobile applications are the human fuel of last-mile labor tasks; expended freely at the direction and discretion of some of today’s most well-known corporate entities including Uber Eats, GrubHub and DoorDash.
Workers deserve integrity from contracts (or employment), including an equitable labor agreement and compensation commensurate with local hourly income standards. Should workers be required to provide any corporation with access to their assets for business use, such as mobile technology, a personal vehicle and maintenance, fuel costs, asset depreciation and business insurance; those costs must be fully measured and reported as expenses.
While this may seem like stating the obvious, today, you’ll rarely hear a Dasher or other gig worker even acknowledge expenses. Such is the alternative reality of the game empowered and brought to life. Free from operational expenses, opportunity costs, negative societal externalities, inflation and risk; any business or corporate scheme would be a goldmine. Unfortunately, like DoorDash, goldmines notoriously exploit humans while destroying the Earth.
The withholding of known and critical data required for any contractual or business decision is both unethical and illegal. Gaming and gamifying business with the aid of an isolated smartphone application is a crime not yet punished, but a crime nevertheless. Be assured that the corporations perpetrating this crime know literally everything - every bit of data that is and is not served to a user. A rigged market is a rigged market; paradigm-shifting data science and artificial intelligence don’t let the perpetrating technology creators and corporations off the hook.
For every human playing a role in our modern economy and society, whether as an entrepreneur, employee, consumer, merchant or laborer; each of us must be properly equipped to make fully conscious decisions about patronizing or participating in the Gig Economy and similar black box AI applications, where any given output can’t be safely assumed positive or healthy for humanity.
If all we have is a “black box” it is impossible to understand causes of failure and improve system safety. Additionally, if we grow accustomed to accepting AI’s answers without an explanation, essentially treating it as an Oracle system, we would not be able to tell if it begins providing wrong or manipulative answers. ~Dr. Roman V. Yampolskiy, Unexplainability and Incomprehensibility of Artificial Intelligence
What follows in this work will challenge your view of the world and your place in it. It will challenge your views of humanity, power, and money; even of good and evil. That’s a hell of a set-up, I know. I’m as shocked as you will be; it simply is. We must confront these truths, as we can ignore them only at our peril. In the process of our shared discovery, you’ll be given facts with direct information sources, along with the logic necessary to clearly grasp the concepts presented. Most importantly, you will be given the information to process a personal engagement strategy for this quickly-expanding paradigm of applications utilizing sophisticated data science and artificial intelligence technologies.
When I began this project; with my mistreated and misrepresented fellow-Dashers in my thoughts and consciousness, I thought I had all the damning indignities and inequities of DoorDash’s artificial intelligence-operated technology necessary to shock the world. However, I knew almost nothing of true significance. Since quitting all other work to write this book four-months ago, what I’ve learned has changed everything for me, for you, and I’m sorry to say, for the survival of our species in any recognizable human form.
What passes today for media coverage of DoorDash consists of fawning financial analysis, dubious news sources, divisive social media posts and duplicitous marketing. This toxic-brew of misrepresentation provides a noxious narrative that’s anything and everything one can imagine, but not at all what it appears to be; most certainly not reality. Through two-years and 5,520 “Lifetime Deliveries” accepted on my smartphone via the Dasher App, I experienced first-hand DoorDash’s gaslit race-to-the-bottom and the toll it can take on one’s body, mind and financial stability.
No part of Full Dashclosure relies upon tips and tricks, money-making strategies, or any kind of advice for better-serving DoorDash, which currently orchestrates approximately 60% of the last-mile delivery market. First, food delivery and market strategy topics are intensely covered by a community of YouTube content creators sharing their good, bad, ugly and sad experiences with viewers by the thousands. Further, those passionate and highly-experienced gigapp thought leaders today, could not be more incorrect about what’s truly occurring in their chosen field and topic.
It’s terribly painful to observe earnest, well-meaning people so profoundly lost in a maze of artificial intelligence-run manipulation. The illusion of Dasher control is a keystone part of the gamified DoorDash scheme. Dashers control nothing. They're not interacting in a real market. Rather, Dashers are like lab rats in a maze; selecting defined paths; and consuming rewards that reinforce their behaviors.
All the while, an independent contractor’s futile struggle for any semblance of independence or success occurs in a simulated and gamified market; within a game world rigged to control their selections and results with great precision. The audacity of technology entrepreneurs creating such an explicitly abusive and exploitative system; a system that robs people of their agency; that games them into servitude; I simply never get over the shock that it’s all gone so far.
This work will expose self-evident details and facts which have been intentionally and scrupulously hidden from view by ruthless global corporations, wealthy executives and myopic data scientists. Truth is the only answer to our current crisis of this encroaching tech monopoly and singularity; and once it is known to our many, as opposed to the privileged few, perceptions can never be the same again.
The illusion will be shattered and the magic dispelled such that the unconsciousness; the insanity to which we’ve been subjected will lose its power in totality. We’ll recognize coercive and exploitative artificial intelligence because we are awakened to our consciousness. Ask yourself this question and meditate upon the answer: With your current understanding of artificial intelligence, would you give your trust and power over your life to any given system, believing that the artificial intelligence won’t exploit you?