In today’s day and age people rely heavily on cab aggregators for short-distance and long-distance travelling purposes. These cab applications use Artificial Intelligence and online technology for its functioning which oftentimes paves way for error.
Srikanth, a Hyderabad-based Uber driver, was recently on the receiving end of the shortcomings of Artificial Intelligence.
A few weeks ago, Srikanth had shaved off his hair to offer them to the deity at Tirumala Tirupati Devasthana, reported News18. Later, when Srikanth tried to log into Uber’s internal portal for its network of drivers, he was unable to re-register himself.
This was because the app’s software failed to recognise Sirkanth’s new look with his shaved head. Clicking selfies from various angles, he tried logging into the portal at least four times, but to no avail, as he was ultimately banned by the facial recognition software for ‘multiple logging attempts’.
It has been over a month to this incident and Srikanth has been jobless since then. He says that Uber hasn’t responded to his grievances yet even though he presented documents with a ‘before and after pictures’.
“I visited the Uber office multiple times, but they are refusing to reinstate me as a driver without giving me a valid reason. I have been running from pillar to post since for the last one month and there has been no solution yet. I am struggling to make my ends meet. My entire family is dependent on me”, Srikanth was quoted as saying by News18.
The Hyderabad resident, had joined Uber in 2019 and has a 5.67 star rating on the app for completing nearly 1,428 trips till date.
After the matter was highlighted by Shaik Salauddin, general secretary of Indian Federation of App-based transport workers, Srikant’s incident went viral on social media.
Salauddin said that Uber ignored Srikanth’s pleas and that many cab drivers in the recent past have struggled to make ends meet due to no provision of a designated grievance cell to acknowledge their problems in the first place, let alone solving them.
Meanwhile, Uber India has also responded on the Issue.
“The driver in question had visited an Uber Partner Seva Kendra when he was unable to log in and it was communicated to him that his access to the app had been removed due to repeated violations of our community guidelines, which set the highest possible safety standards on our platform,” the cab aggregator said.
Uber stated that its facial recognition tool is enable to detect natural changes in a person’s appearance.
“In case drivers face a problem logging in due to any technical issue with the selfie verification process, they have the option to visit the nearest Uber Partner Seva Kendra for a manual review of their profile,” the company said.
