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How Amazon's Robots Move Everything Around
dkatana writes: Amazon's drones have a long way to become reality, but the real magic of the Internet of Things (IoT) is already happening at Amazon's vast fulfillment warehouses in the US. Amazon runs a fleet of thousands of small robots moving storage pods around so orders can be fulfilled in record time. They are so efficient that they can move an entire warehouse and have ready to operate again during the weekend. All together the small robots have traveled over 93 million miles — almost the distance from Earth to the Sun.
The irony to this is that a lot of low skilled workers are currently demanding more money for their current jobs. Raises to the min wage of $15/hr and so on.
http://www.businessinsider.com...
The company's robot can "slice toppings like tomatoes and pickles immediately before it places the slice onto your burger, giving you the freshest burger possible." The robot is "more consistent, more sanitary, and can produce ~360 hamburgers per hour." That's one burger every 10 seconds.
One of these robots in a McDonald's could probably replace 4 or more employees. If McDonald's isn't testing these now, they're nuts.
Momentum Machines cofounder Alexandros Vardakostas told Xconomy his "device isnâ(TM)t meant to make employees more efficient. Itâ(TM)s meant to completely obviate them." Indeed, marketing copy on the company's site reads that their automaton "does everything employees can do, except better."
The same is true of the Amazon Warehouse robots, those jobs are history...
Yes, yes, there will be new jobs building these robots, but do you believe that someone who used to flip burgers is now going to build robots? Do you think it will take just as many of them to build the robots?
We are approaching a point where we no longer need all the people we have to do all the things that need to be done. This will be an interesting challenge for the 21st century, what do we do with all the people who are no longer required to make stuff?
It's not irony.
Chinese noodle workers who make under $400 a year were replaced by robots.
Think you can live in the 1st world for $400 a year?
There is plenty of food, water, and resources for everyone.
We share or things get ugly asthey have over and over and over in the past.
Robot jobs are two to three orders of magnitude fewer than the industries they are replacing.
We'll either go to a basic income, or a revolution, or a tax on robotic labor, etc. etc.
You can have 30% of the population starving, homeless, and not expect civil unrest.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The same thing we've always done: belittle and mock them for being unable to get a job. While we wait for that time to come, we'll do the same thing we've been doing: belittle and mock people for thinking that robots will ever replace people at their job.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
what about moving around people gumming up the works who are a in a win win win they keep there job or win they go to prison where the state pays for there room, broad and doctor.
Clearly they should be putting money into providing language education instead of female companions.
The bigger issue is how do we get people to stop making MORE people that will not have a role in society to fill when they reach adulthood. We're automating the world for the benefit of mankind, but continue to breed like we're all still living off the family farm.
The developed world has a declining native population. In a few generations, we won't have to worry about robots taking our jobs, because there won't be any humans left.
Look at Japan, for example.
Only employees who do nothing but make burgers. In practice it can probably improve efficiency enough to do away with one employee in a ten man shop.
Touchscreen kiosks can replace the three that are taking orders. Even better, would be to appify the process, so you can place and pay for your order on your mobile device, get a text message when it is ready, and then pick it up at the drive-by-window by scanning a QR code.
So, while my automated factory dismantles the solar system to build my trillion robot army, where you expect to get your resources from?
Only those with a massive lack of imagination (like, say, Marxists) believe there are plenty of resources.
For Capitalists, yes. You're either a cog in the great economic machine, or chaff to be tossed aside.
No. In Marxism, you work or starve. Since you have no capital of your own, you are totally reliant on the State to feed you. In Capitalism, you work... or do whatever you feel like with whatever capital you've accumulated.
Just a little tiny bit of a difference, there.
Indeed. We're heading for a world where all the workers own their means of production.
Yet the Marxists seem really rather annoyed about that.
We share or things get ugly as they have over and over and over in the past.
During the last century the worst ugliness was caused by the mandatory "sharing" that you propose as the solution.
How does that work? I buy a burgerbot and lease it to McDonalds instead of working there myself? Why would McDonalds deal with me when they can buy 500,000 burgerbots in bulk at a price far lower than I could ever negotiate for my single bot?
Or I buy a burgerbot and just compete with McDonalds, along with the other 499,999 people that thought this was a good idea?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
He wants families to be forced out of work and to starve. That is so Republican of him. So Republican. They hate families.
Jeff Bezos has supported and donated primarily to Democratic causes and Democratic candidates.
Are economic ones the only roles that society has?
You may not think of it as such, but *everything* is an economic transaction or endeavor, since at its core, economics is the study of dealing with scarcity: of time, of resources, of personnel, etc.
What I want to know is: with all this tech, why haven't they learned make a good website?
"During the last century the worst ugliness was caused by the mandatory "sharing" that you propose as the solution."
Uhhh... People living in Northern Europe probably will disagree.
I guess you're implying that *you* have a brain and obviously you can explain this:
"Almost nobody has any real savings and so borrowing savings at a normal interest rate is impossible"
How do you borrow savings? I can't wait to hear this.
It's how banks used to work. People put their savings into the bank, the bank paid them interest on the savings. The bank lent out the savings at a higher interest rate and made money that way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Um. Yes there is.
See I can do the same thing.
Link it.
We have a distribution problem. Not a raw resource problem.
Everyone on earth could live better than u.s. citizens did in the 1950s. No one needs to starve. No one needs to be without shelter. No one needs to be without water. And really no one needs to be without entertainment or cheap intoxicants.
That, friends, and family is all most people in the world has needed to be happy for most of time.
The few rare birds with genius level talent could still excel. Everyone doesn't have to suffer.
But yea.. things are going to get ugly despite all that. Hoping it will be after I'm 6' under. Will do what I can tho while I'm here.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.