Algorithms can be employed to sniff out desperation for income based on the extremes people are willing to take on the job, such as high trip acceptance rates among Uber drivers. With this hoard of granular information, A.I. can calculate the lowest possible pay that workers across sectors will tolerate and suggest incentives like bonuses to control their behavior. While bosses have always offered so-called variable pay—for instance, paying more for night shifts or offering performance-based salary boosts—high-tech surveillance coupled with A.I. is taking real-time tailored wages to new extremes.

“Now you have machine learning trained on identifying the desperation index of workers,” Zephyr Teachout, a professor of law at Fordham University, told me. “When you move to the formal employment context, there is every reason to think that employers who can would be interested in tailoring their wages and using behavioral data.”

The clearest parallels can be drawn in other independent contractor roles, which make up around 15 percent of U.S. workers. Dubal has found that independent contractors working with Instacart and Amazon are similarly surveilled and receive personalized pay based on information including the times of day and length of time they work, along with the types of tasks they’re willing to accept.