Meet Barry, the Virtual Reality firing game

[FaxModem1]

Technology Review

You can now practice firing someone in virtual reality
Aug 9

You can now practice firing someone in virtual reality
A virtual employee called Barry.
Meet Barry: his sole purpose in life is to listen patiently, and then protest or sob a little as you fire him from an imaginary job in virtual reality.

Disposable hero: He was created by Talespin, a company that offers virtual reality workplace training. Barry and other VR characters were developed to help teach people “soft” management skills—such as how to let someone go without causing a scene. If you are too blunt with Barry, he’ll put his head in his hands; other missteps will cause him to shout and yell.

Learning tool: This might seem bizarre, even dystopian, but virtual reality is gaining momentum as a training tool. The technology can provide a heightened sense of realism that aids the learning process, and it can allow people to practice doing things that would be impossible otherwise. VR is used to teach people to perform safety tasks, for example. But it is also increasingly being used to train new employees at places like Walmart and Chipotle.

Office space: You can expect this trend to spread to offices in coming years. “We are seeing repeated interest in building training products around interviewing skills, navigating difficult conversations, consultative selling, performance reviews, and identifying diversity and inclusion best practices, to name a few,” says Kyle Jackson, CEO of Talespin.

Unreal feeling: Computers and algorithms are sometimes now used to monitor workers’ output and performance. But while it’s common to think that social and emotional skills are exempt from this automation creep, Barry suggests otherwise. “Soft skills are ranked among the most important for any organization as they discuss their needs for the future of work,” Jackson says. “We don't see this slowing down any time soon.”

Uncanny colleague: The catch with Barry and other virtual characters, in case you didn’t guess, is that their effectiveness depends on how convincing they are. Barry looks quite realistic for an avatar, but Jackson says the character follows a set script—so it can’t interact in a very natural way.

Learning process: Avatars behave more naturally if they’re powered by machine learning—but it’s going to be a long while before these characters exhibit, or respond to, body language in realistic ways. As Danielle Levac, a professor at Northeastern University who specializes in using VR for rehab, says: “If you’re not able to escape the notion that it isn’t a real person, it’s not necessarily going to transfer.”

So, as someone who has played GTAV, and many other violent games, I find this way more disturbing.

[K. A. Pital]

Fucking capitalism. Fucking capitalists.

That we are still talking about people being „fired“ and „unemployed“ in the XXI century is a travesty.

This is like games where you torture people or mistreat slaves. This shit is sick.

[ray245]

Fucking capitalism. Fucking capitalists.

That we are still talking about people being „fired“ and „unemployed“ in the XXI century is a travesty.

This is like games where you torture people or mistreat slaves. This shit is sick.

Humans can be deeply disturbing. It's not that different from people who enjoy torture scenes in horror films.

[K. A. Pital]

Horror films are not education material last time I checked.

Do we need lessons in cruelty? We need to teach people sociopathy? Not sociopathic enough for the glorious crapitalist future?

It‘s a school of cruelty, university of psychopathy, academy of callousness.

[ray245]

Horror films are not education material last time I checked.

Do we need lessons in cruelty? We need to teach people sociopathy? Not sociopathic enough for the glorious crapitalist future?

It‘s a school of cruelty, university of psychopathy, academy of callousness.

The article is badly written because it is connecting two different topics into one. It doesn't seem like the Meet Barry game was designed as a "training tool". It seems to be designed as a game like GTA.

The second paragraph is referring to Virtual reality IN GENERAL, which has nothing to do with capitalism per say. VR can be really useful training tool for doctors and especially surgeons and etc.

[K. A. Pital]

The article is about firing games, which - no matter if VR or not - are bullshit, sick bullshit. It is explicitly mentioned that it is a training program for „soft skills“, did you fail at reading?

What‘s next, school bully VR?

[AniThyng]

Most managers will have to fire or lay off people at some point in thier career, and not everyone in such a position is a sociopath that enjoys or is indifferent to how painful it is for the person being fired, it is not unreasonable to have to have training on how to do this.

[K. A. Pital]

Most managers will have to fire or lay off people at some point in thier career, and not everyone in such a position is a sociopath that enjoys or is indifferent to how painful it is for the person being fired, it is not unreasonable to have to have training on how to do this.

In cruel capitalist societies where managers are willing accomplices of the Masters? Yes. Academy of cruelty has taught you well.

No. My point is that it is uncomfortable for people to fire others. As it should be! Without very good grounds (crime, harassment) a person should not have their life destroyed at the whim of a capitalist. Never!

For the few exceptions the people can manag firing without training. This is a training for the conveyor, for companies that have massive turnover and fire people at will.

This should be destroyed.

[Broomstick]

Fucking capitalism. Fucking capitalists.

That we are still talking about people being „fired“ and „unemployed“ in the XXI century is a travesty.

Gee, I dunno ... a person who assaults another worker at the company, or who steals from the company, probably should be removed from the situation for the sake of the other people working there.

There are valid reasons for firing people.

This is like games where you torture people or mistreat slaves. This shit is sick.

Yeah, probably. Also, does it have the occasional worker-you-are-firing flip out? Become violent? Bring a gun to the party and start shooting? Because those are all situations that managers have had to deal with and need training to cope with/avoid/recover from.

[K. A. Pital]

Gee, I dunno ... a person who assaults another worker at the company, or who steals from the company, probably should be removed from the situation for the sake of the other people working there.

I said above: exceptions like crime, attacks, sexual harassment are grounds for dismissal (but also not for wrecking a person‘s life, which under capitalism losing a job with criminal records would likely precipitate).

But this clearly is exceptional and also can be handled without going through VR sessions of abusing a hapeless worker bot.

[tezunegari]

Firing game, my ass.

It's a Training Program for Soft Skills.
Firing people is still part of the business world - and it always will be.

Use cases the program can simulate:
INterview (hiring)
Employee Termination
Exit Interviews
Unconscious Bias Training
Sensitivity Training
Coaching and Mentoring
Sexual Harassment Prevention Training
Non-Verbal Communication
Difficult Conversations
De-escalation Training
Conflict Resolution / Mediation
Empathy Training
Intercultural Competence
Interpersonal Skills
Diversity and Inclusion

Cold Calling
Building Rapport
Overcoming Objections
Negotiations (Business)
Communicating Product Knowledge
Closing Deals
Identifying Customer Needs
Customer Service (General)
Customer Service (Complaints/Escalation)
Helpdesk / Tech Support

Giving Critical Feedback
Performance Review
Talent management
Team MAnagement
Facilitating Group Discussions
Breaking Bad News
Manager/Direct Report Conversations
Giving Depositions
Public Speaking Practice / Presentation Skills

[K. A. Pital]

Sure, creating a poor virtual sob just so that you can train firing him is not sick. It's humane. I got my sympathies on the wrong side here, sorry. POOR MANAGERS. POOR BOSSES. POOR CAPITALISTS.

I am guilty of sympathizing with a voiceless downtrodden piece of software that exists to be a ragdoll. I fully admit my sins and repent. I failed my sociopathy class.

[Starglider]

I'm dubious about the ROI on this versus the standard generic-training-videos-as-a-service unbundled HR offering, but I'm not surprised they're going for the upsell given that HR managers like to feel they're a major part of the whole organisational paradigm transformation treadmill. Better the ringfenced HR capex goes on this than the completely worthless programmes e.g. handwriting analysis.

[tezunegari]

Sure, creating a poor virtual sob just so that you can train firing him is not sick. It's humane. I got my sympathies on the wrong side here, sorry. POOR MANAGERS. POOR BOSSES. POOR CAPITALISTS.

I am guilty of sympathizing with a voiceless downtrodden piece of software that exists to be a ragdoll. I fully admit my sins and repent. I failed my sociopathy class.
[...]

34 scenarios... and you focus on Employee Termination.

This program is not about tormenting an Employee.
It's the exact opposite.
It's about handling the situation of having to terminate someone in a professional manner.

Barry has no emotions.
Barry is not a person.
Barry is a training tool.
Nothing more, nothing less.
It's not about Barry but how the user reacts to Barry and handles the situation.

So yes, you have your sympathies on the wrong side.

[K. A. Pital]

I'm dubious about the ROI on this versus the standard generic-training-videos-as-a-service unbundled HR offering, but I'm not surprised they're going for the upsell given that HR managers like to feel they're a major part of the whole organisational paradigm transformation treadmill. Better the ringfenced HR capex goes on this than the completely worthless programmes e.g. handwriting analysis.

More business-speak, not enough buzzwords. You're just a corporate drone, you've got stiff competition from AI yourself. Any third-rate shitbot embedded in a smartphone could soon be spouting first-rate corporate propaganda better than you.

It's about handling the situation of having to terminate someone in a professional manner.

Why should we make the situation of having to terminate anyone any easier for bosses?

Anything that torments the collaborators of the Masters at night, that lets them lose sleep, is good.
Those who aren't totally empathy-dead husks can at least make a decision on whether they want to keep serving the Masters.

[tezunegari]

Why should we make the situation of having to terminate anyone any easier for bosses?

Anything that torments the collaborators of the Masters at night, that lets them lose sleep, is good.
Those who aren't totally empathy-dead husks can at least make a decision on whether they want to keep serving the Masters.

Spare me your manifesto speech.

This is about people learning how to handle a situation and, in this case, not to torment a person while getting the job done.

And yet you portray it as evil incarnate.

Employee Termination is and will be part of any company business from a freelancer who hired an assistant to Fortune 500.

[K. A. Pital]

This is about people learning how to handle a situation and, in this case, not to torment a person while getting the job done

Should be pretty obvious to a normal person, then. Only an empathy-dead psychopath would need "assistance" here.

Serving the masters is bad. People should feel bad about it if they fire people without good grounds.

If there are grounds (crime, harassment, assault of coworkers), then yes, firing may be necessary, but training for such exceptions is not something you'd need software drills for.

Employee Termination is and will be part of any company business from a freelancer who hired an assistant to Fortune 500.

Sure it will, in our cruel world, I said as much above.

[Starglider]

Corporate originated dialects are actually quite interesting, in an anthropological sense. They do resemble procedurally generated twaddle to casual examination (a well known and thoroughly mined source for low-impact counterculture humour). While there are some coding efficiency improvements (which people naturally seek regardless of the merit of the concepts being coded) and domain competency signalling as per profession-specific dialog in general, the primary purposes in regular use are (sub)cultural identification and domain-specific (usually deniable) subtext. Large multinationals in particular use flavours of corporate dialect for both coarse ingroup/outgroup designation and for subgroupings, as do various cross-company social networks and 'philosophical' (for lack of a better word, without using the dialect itself) value-aligned groups. The constant mutation, branching, obsolence and merging of corporate dialect, and the complex social behaviours it mediates, are amusingly similar to the dynamics of assorted liberal subcultures. The virtue and/or identity signalling through the use of the trendiest (metric generated from peer observation weighted by alignment of group identify vectors) terms and constant attempts to reap the credit and control benefits of defining the next set of shifts is almost identical.

In summary software generation of corporate dialect might look easier than conventional language, and in fact it is if the goal is just verisimilitude for casual observers (as demonstrated by countless procedural joke pages available since at least the early 2000s). However procedural generation of corporate dialect as actually used by decision makers for relevant communication in the ingroup is harder than the equivalent conventional language (at the same domain width); the semantics are equally hard but there is additional obfuscation on the subtext and a reduced effective sample size for the organisation-specific elements (vs being able to train on huge corpi for base dialects).

Fortunately this isn't really a blocker for automation of management decisions as human decision makers have no expectation that infrastructure will imitate them or actively participate in their social games. Indeed any attempt to do so would almost certainly be a major perceived negative (which is not to rule out non-peer intentional exploitation and manipulation of the organisational social network, some crude examples of which already exist). As such the only case where the challenge of fully accurate corporate dialect generation is really relevant is full automation of sales agents; although I confess machine generation of TED talks would be amusing.

[K. A. Pital]

Bot-written post

OK, whatever you say, BOSS. I hope BOSS is not a traitor.

...corporate dialect, and the complex social behaviours it mediates...

About as complex as in Dilbert. Bunch of morons huffing and puffing and making themselves important; access means status, status means wealth, meow meow, kill my own mommy for money. Neologisms being constantly generated is a feature of language itself, but under capitalism neologisms are another way of selling air (like religion - if you are clever enough to invent a new one, you can profit massively because you'd be basically selling GOD himself), so very, extremely lucrative. In essence, the material conditions of production under capitalism (bullshit terms themselves can be used to generate capital) defines the endless expansion of corporate bullshit-speak, because neologisms are like gadgets, except without production costs.

You could call this complex, sure. To me it's more of a rather primitive virus-like behaviour. "Newest shit term can make me money = attempt to launch own viral term = success = profit (failure = try again, there are little costs to generation of neologisms, dead virus strain doesn't mean there can't be a new virus". It's actually no coincidence the corporate humdrum is so primitive and repetitious, compared to literature.

[RogueIce]

Most managers will have to fire or lay off people at some point in thier career, and not everyone in such a position is a sociopath that enjoys or is indifferent to how painful it is for the person being fired, it is not unreasonable to have to have training on how to do this.

In cruel capitalist societies where managers are willing accomplices of the Masters? Yes. Academy of cruelty has taught you well.

No. My point is that it is uncomfortable for people to fire others. As it should be! Without very good grounds (crime, harassment) a person should not have their life destroyed at the whim of a capitalist. Never!

For the few exceptions the people can manag firing without training. This is a training for the conveyor, for companies that have massive turnover and fire people at will.

This should be destroyed.

I'm curious, but do your "few exceptions" go beyond criminal acts and actively malicious behavior?

Like, should somebody who just plain sucks at their job, offers minimal productivity or even negative productivity - because they fuck up what work they do and somebody else has to go back and fix it - just be carried by the company anyway?

If they can be fired for that, in your opinion, then why is this training so bad? Training a manager to essentially say "we're letting you go because you suck at your job" without being an asshole about it would be a good thing, wouldn't it?

[K. A. Pital]

Work is tied to livelihood in the world of industrialized production where products are alienated from the people making them.

Therefore in my view everyone has an unconditional right to livelihood- a right to live, if it sounds better to you - and cannot be fired because in someone’s view he is sucking at his job.

Who sucks - the person or the one who gave him this job in the first place? Demotion or transfer to a different branch, company or even industry is an acceptable tool, but throwing out is not.

If the person is unwilling to do the work any further and is actively against it, then let them be retrained for a different job. State universities and trade schools shall do it.

I have no desire to solve capitalism’s problems with firing people. Demote any managers who hire unqualified people first, how’s that for a change.

“Negative productivity”! A person exists first and foremost for himself and other people. Most production is non-essential bullshit and the levels of pressure put on people to manufacture literally worthless crap are insane. Not to mention the tertiary sector of glorified help!

[Ziggy Stardust]

(Apologies for the selective quoting, but really just trying to respond to a very specific point here)

Demotion or transfer to a different branch, company or even industry is an acceptable tool, but throwing out is not.

Okay, let's say that they aren't "fired", merely "transferred" to another company or industry. Do you not think that managers (or commissars or whatever the semantic game you want to play with what to call whoever makes these decisions) should be trained to do this "transfer" well? To have this conversation with an individual to tell them that they have to be moved to a different job they don't suck at? To have the interpersonal skills necessary to have difficult conversations like that? Or are you so hideously naive to the way human beings operate that you think all workers will just be so overjoyed at the idea that they will still be able to have a job, albeit in a different industry, that they will just be grateful for that and could never be made upset by being confronted? That people will never have some sense of pride or identity invested in their livelihood, and as such it can be stripped and replaced seamlessly?

It is, in fact, a bizarrely capitalist/corporatist mindset, because it's treating humans as simple, emotionless automatons who can be shuffled about freely throughout the economy with no agency of their own and who won't dissent because they are so grateful to be afforded the privilege of a job.

[K. A. Pital]

Where have I said being able to explain why a person is transferred to a different position is useless or unnecessary? The hell?

Cut the strawmen. And a job is not a „privilege“, ffs, it is a necessary condition for survival in the industrial world.

Note the workers are also able to change their profession if they so desire, with education and government-funded courses. Nice of you to completely strawman my position into removing agency from the workers when in fact I support worker’s councils which should decide upon the matters that concern the workplace, and be in fact a collective management organ.

Corporations just use people until they are no longer needed, then throw them out. This is a reality.

Are you saying that I am bad for suggesting to offer people a different position instead of just throwing them out the door? Wow.

Note if they are fine with neither (cannot perform old job and do not want the new), they are free to quit and go for retraining at school.

I haven’t seen capitalists being keen on offering the fired people different positions, and somehow the fired people seemed to be unhappy about being fired. So I think maybe- just maybe- a job is not a „privilege“ for them?

[Proletarian]

.

The second paragraph is referring to Virtual reality IN GENERAL, which has nothing to do with capitalism per say.

Everything under capitalism has to do with capitalism.

For example:

VR can be really useful training tool for doctors and especially surgeons and etc.

None of this occurs in a vacuum. VR training programs for doctors are produced with programmers paid a wage and licensed to for-profit medical schools for a fee, to train surgeons who will open private practices. The labor of the VR programmers is converted into a commodity, which is excbanged for money-capital.

[Surlethe]

Everything under capitalism has to do with capitalism.

After all, in the immortal words of the Joker: "If you're good at something, never do it for free."