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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?
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.
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.
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.