Chinese Warehouse Cut Labor Costs In Half With a Fleet of Tiny Robots (qz.com)

Many people around the world fear their job will eventually be replaced by a machine, including many Slashdotters. But workers in China may be the most fearful as Asia produces more robots than the rest of the world combined. Last week, a Chinese shipping company, called Shentong Express, showed off a mildly-dystopian automated warehouse that reportedly cut its labor costs in half using a fleet of tiny robots, according to the South China Morning Post. Quartz reports: In a video, tiny orange robots made by Hikvision ferry packages around an eastern China warehouse, taking each parcel from a human worker, driving under a scanner, and then dumping the package down a specific chute for it to be shipped. The human's main job in the video appears to be picking up packages and placing them label-up on top of the robot, a task modern robotics is only just starting to put into warehouse production. A spokesperson told the Post that Shentong is using the robot in two of its warehouses, and hopes to expand use to the rest of the country.

Comments

Revolution

[Dutchmaan]

Eventually it's going to reach a tipping point where you choke enough people into poverty that eventually they're just going to say "fuck it, I have to survive somehow" ....and start just taking all those pretty coins that robotics have allowed you to save... This is just a basic fact of life, you can't make people poor and expect them to just sit there and take it.

Re: Revolution

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be under the impression that people without jobs will still be able to purchase your products.

Re:Revolution

[Dutchmaan]

Is that what you took away from my post.. Sorry but you're wrong, I'm speaking on a much more macro level of human behavior. I could just as easily say that YOU are under the impression that people **on the whole** can be squeezed indefinitely with no consequence. Congratulations on running an efficient company, hopefully, there aren't thousands upon thousands of desperate people living around you who need to survive.

The whole "adapt or starve" mantra corporate apologists like to trot out for these kinds of stories seem to forget that "adapt or starve" is called "desperation" as a synonym. People NEED A PATH to survive, and if they don't have one then you're shiny efficient business is going to look like a shiny pile of resources to people who just don't care anymore... and people like YOU put them there, so I doubt all your hard work and dedication will mean a thing to them.

Re:Revolution

[barc0001]

The problem is even more basic than that. You automate and save pretty coins, the fast food chains automate and save pretty coins, the factory automates and saves pretty coins. However, pretty soon you're not saving any more pretty coins because nobody is buying your shipping service, the fast food chains are closing locations due to lack of customers, the factories are closing, the real estate leasing companies for the space the fast food companies' outlets occupied and factories leased start losing revenue and lay people off, and so it goes.

When the tipping point hits, I think it'll happen fast enough that by the time people are thinking revolution, a lot of the supposed fat cats will also be broke with nothing to their names but a factory that makes junk nobody can afford to buy or even wants compared to their next meal.

Re:Revolution

[Kjella]

Eventually it's going to reach a tipping point where you choke enough people into poverty that eventually they're just going to say "fuck it, I have to survive somehow"

Except the people living in extreme poverty is dropping rapidly, in 2016 the estimate was 9.1% of the world population. This is down from 9.6% in 2015, 20.4% in 2005 and 35.0% in 1990. This year a famine was declared in South-Sudan because of the civil war, but otherwise the world has been free of famine for the last six years. World literacy is at an all time high at 86.1% and climbing with youth literacy at 91.4%. Average life expectancy was 71.5 years in 2014, up from 67.2 years in 2010. About 46.1% of the population have access to a residential Internet connection, up 2.7% from last year and 4.77 billion people have a cell phone, up from 4.61 billion.

Yes, I know US median household income has been stagnant since the 1970s but for the world as a whole almost every arrow is pointing in the right direction. The poor people are still poor, in some cases relatively speaking even poorer compared to the 1%ers. But the poor aren't starving or freezing to death or dying from unclean water and basic sanitation and medicine, at least not in anywhere near the numbers they used to. Short of active war zones we pretty much manage to give aid where it's needed. China and India is rapidly modernizing. Africa is still a disaster area, particularly south of Sahara but even there progress is just sluggish not spiraling downwards.

Maybe robots will fuck all that up but I doubt it, it's easier to just let us have reasonable comfortable lives and let us produce 1.x kids reducing the population naturally, if the robots are so efficient the dead weight won't be much of a burden. Less than riots and revolutions and all that, I think we got a pretty good idea how far people can be pushed before they really hit the "fuck it, I got nothing to lose" level. I mean most of us have a fairly civilized society, looking at actual war zones it could be a lot worse than living on food coupons.

Re:Revolution

[Anonymous Coward]

As a business owner myself, I agree with your position. As someone who's been touting the coming economic apocalypse, I also agree with GPs positon (my business is automation; I literally get hired to put people out of work).

I think you both are talking about slightly different things. GP is talking about a scenario where a business owner gets more efficient, but doesn't pass that efficiency along onto his customers and instead continues to raises the prices (or at least creeps them up with inflation, etc) and amasses more and more wealth, basically pocketing the salaries of the workers he's displaced.

The problem is that if a company (or by extension an individual, aka director or shareholder) accumulates more and more wealth, the economy as a whole becomes less effective at moving resources around. There are issues of what happens to the company if people cannot buy its products anymore (but these companies would have savings to last a long time anyways) and there are issues of what happens to the people if they cannot afford the necessities of life anymore.

What GP is arguing is that if your hypothetical company amasses so much wealth (and perhaps pays an insanely low tax rate) it will piss off the people who no longer have jobs, and at some proportion these people are just going to take what they want from the company (or shareholders/directors) because they need to survive. Imagine in 20 years if (X close to 100)% of US citizens are well below the poverty line and desperate and the top people on the 'States have a few trillion between them. What will happen once there are (Y very large number) of desperate people for each hired goon to protect the rich's assets?

Re:Revolution

[Jason1729]

You seem to have never read a history book before. It's not a matter of one company saving a few bucks. It's a matter of creating a system where the vast majority have no hope of ever getting out of a subsistence existence where the small few with the money to buy those robots take all the luxury for themselves.

If you tell them to eat cake when they can't afford bread (or cake), they will silt your throat and take your cake. It happens *every* time the rich get too greedy.

Re: Revolution

[tsqr]

Inflation.

US median income in 1970: $7,701

US median income in 2014: $53,013

$7,701 1970 dollars equivalent worth in 2014: $46,987

Median income growth over inflation: 12.8%

Re:Goodbye Amazon Employees

[pete6677]

The reason Amazon treats its warehouse employees so badly is because it considers them a temporary and costly inconvenience. Their only role is to serve as temporary placeholders until robots get good enough to run the warehouses entirely, then there will be no more meatbag employees.

Re:Goodbye Amazon Employees

[l810c]

There is this old slogan "Buy American"

The new slogan for the 21st century must be "Buy Human"