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As Robots Move Into Amazon's Warehouses, What's Happening To Its Human Workers? (brisbanetimes.com.au)
An anonymous reader writes:
A 21-year-old Amazon warehouse worker has been replaced by "a giant, bright yellow mechanical arm" that stacks 25-pound bins. "Her new job at Amazon is to baby-sit several robots at a time," reports the New York Times, "troubleshooting them when necessary and making sure they have bins to load... [T]he company's eye-popping growth has turned it into a hiring machine, with an unquenchable need for entry-level warehouse workers to satisfy customer orders." Even though Amazon now has over 100,000 robots, they still plan to create 50,000 new jobs when they open their second headquarters. "It's certainly true that Amazon would not be able to operate at the costs they have and the costs they provide customers without this automation," said Martin Ford, author of the futurist book Rise of the Robots. "Maybe we wouldn't be getting two-day shipping."
Amazon's top operations executive says they're saving less-tedious jobs for the humans who work as "pickers" and "stowers" for the robots. "It's a new item each time," Mr. Clark said. "You're finding something, you're inspecting things, you're engaging your mind in a way that I think is important." The Times reports that the robots "also cut down on the walking required of workers, making Amazon pickers more efficient and less tired. The robots also allow Amazon to pack shelves together like cars in rush-hour traffic, because they no longer need aisle space for humans, [meaning] more inventory under one roof, which means better selection for customers."
"When Amazon installed the robots, some people who had stacked bins before took courses at the company to become robot operators. Many others moved to receiving stations, where they manually sort big boxes of merchandise into bins. No people were laid off when the robots were installed, and Amazon found new roles for the displaced workers, Clark said... The question going forward is: What happens when the future generations of robots arrive?"
Amazon's top operations executive says they're saving less-tedious jobs for the humans who work as "pickers" and "stowers" for the robots. "It's a new item each time," Mr. Clark said. "You're finding something, you're inspecting things, you're engaging your mind in a way that I think is important." The Times reports that the robots "also cut down on the walking required of workers, making Amazon pickers more efficient and less tired. The robots also allow Amazon to pack shelves together like cars in rush-hour traffic, because they no longer need aisle space for humans, [meaning] more inventory under one roof, which means better selection for customers."
"When Amazon installed the robots, some people who had stacked bins before took courses at the company to become robot operators. Many others moved to receiving stations, where they manually sort big boxes of merchandise into bins. No people were laid off when the robots were installed, and Amazon found new roles for the displaced workers, Clark said... The question going forward is: What happens when the future generations of robots arrive?"
Soon we don't need humans in the world, everything can be done by robots.
We are already surpassing the world that's depicted in the TV series Max Headroom.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Meatpacks are slow
Meatpacks get tired easily
Meatpacks are emo, too emo, making even more unreliable
Buh bye, meatpacks !
The humans become entirely obsolete, naturally.
The question going forward is: What happens when the future generations of robots arrive?
Right now productivity growth in the first world is less than 3%. Much less, in many places. The answer to the above question is "very, very little".
That is a sad thing, because it means we will not be significantly richer in the future. Economists right now are assuming that the future will be much richer, and therefore better able to deal with climate change and other pollution -- which means we do not need to worry as much about that now.
So bring on the robots! We need humans to stop doing trivial jobs and start really improving the lives of everyone.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
So...
What happened to the jobs at the retailers that are replaced by Amazon supply chain (ie, working in the bricks and mortar)..
What happens to the workers at Amazon who get displaced by robots after their work force is saturated? When they are not experiencing growth?
I didn't realise that Amazon employed a PR writer called 'Anonymous reader'.
We are The Amazon. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
Before someone comes in commenting how robots will create more jobs or at least equal jobs like in this instance, it won't. Robot mechanic and all the like might exist for a while, but the end result is always the same: save money by hiring less people per unit of productivity. Translation: less human jobs.
Amazon (along with Walmart) is a perfect example of this as it kills of undoubtedly more middleman retail jobs than it ever created. More efficient organizations win in capitalism and efficiency the last 50 years always meant hiring less expensive westerners, whether that's H1Bs, China, outsourcing, or robots.
Yes, people can be retrained. Really depending on age and openmindedness though. But robots can also retrained and in less time for certain things. Yes, tech opens avenues for job possibilities but those avenues have always been smaller than what they replaced. There were never as many elevator mechanics as elevator operators when the latter got replaced with self-operated push buttons. And what if we are coming to an end to our wants and needs (at least as current tech allows)?
Economics wants to teach us that we have unlimited wants as a basic tenet. I don't think that's fundamentally true. We can have VERY BIG demands, but not unlimted. When I'm watching a netflix film I like, I can't sit there and realistically consume 3-4 other films simultaneously. When I'm there eating a pizza, I might want a few other foods, maybe in rapid succession, but there's a limit to how much I can stuff my mouth. For the most part, Human wants are basically tied to the mouth (food), genitals (sex) or other needs (sleep, keeping warm, etc) or ego. There is a limit to many of these not tied to the person's wallet but rather tech level. Replicators would eliminate many food and material needs but we're not there yet.
But the overarching point is as needs are fulfilled, you can't always get jobs fulfilling higher needs on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Some people simply won't pay for. Some because it's not a service or product that can be made. Some because the tech level isn't there - for instance 200 years ago Kings in tropical countries would have people fanning them with palm leaves. Did the lack of fans create jobs for fanners? Not really, most people just went around hot. Tech opens up previously unimagined conveniences for the rest of society, but jobs won't be one of them in huge amounts.
You can't stop progress, robots are so much better and cheaper (in the end) than using humans for a lot of things (especially factory/warehouse stuff). Even the people in those little cloting sweatshops will be replaced with robots, just now they have a robot that can actually do their work much faster and much more precise..
So we have to deal with it, as many people will loose their jobs to robots and AI (yes even officejobs will be replaced). With the current rate of automation we are actually already to late do handle the loss of jobs and how to figure out how we could give those people a better live. So we need to act real fast as the current system just won't hold for very long. How to solve it? I don't know, but I do know it needs to be dealt with very soon.
"Maybe we wouldn't be getting two-day shipping."
Yeah, and even with a Prime account I still don't get that half the time, which sucks because I specifically needed that for my wife's business.
The videos are a bonus, however, some good original content.
"As Robots Move Into Amazon's Warehouses, What's Happening To Its Human Workers?"
"You are fired" happens. Next question?
Left unsaid is that turnover is high enough they can wait a few months and the excess workforce will leave, and their numbers won't be hired back because that number of human jobs is no longer necessary. A net number of jobs are lost yet noone was laid off. If they were paying $X to humans before, they aren't going to spend $X plus $Y in robot acquisition/maintenance/operating costs; the new X+Y will always be less than the old X (on paper at least) or else they won't pull the trigger. Thus, less total money goes to humans.
Of course, increased automation can allow for new possibilities that couldn't be done before, which could allow for new human jobs to assist, but retail/e-tail is mature enough these 'new possibilities' will boil down to more efficient ways of doing old jobs, and competition means redundancies will be trimmed eventually.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
But in other totally unrelated news, have you tried the new Amazon exclusive product - Soylent Green?
this
The question going forward is: What happens when the future generations of robots arrive?
The same thing as the people that Martian Marine in 'The Expanse' ran into on her AWOL episode in the underbelly of New York? Young people brimming with optimism will put their name on a waiting list for vocational training only to find them selves 20 years later vegetating away on an absolutely minimal government subsistence stipend to keep them from rebelling while they wait for it to finally be their turn to get a slot in the vocational training program, a slot that will never come. Meanwhile the offspring of the elite get all the vocational training slots, cushy jobs and genetic enhancements. In a world like that I'd give pretty much everything for a one way ticket to Mars, The Belt, the Jovian Colones, the outer rim settlements or even a shit-hole mining colony on a rock in the Kuiper Belt. Failing this there is the future where the redundant workers will form an important component of Solyent Green. Let's hope it won't come to that.
They are tools to enhance the wealth of the company. If other tools can do that better, other tools will be used.
For this reason alone I never use the self-checkout at the supermarket. It is my (small) way of keeping some people making money at a job.
I do this, because I know my job could be next. Perhaps not directly, but indirectly, because more people on the market means more people entering my field, means a higher supply and thus lower prices.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I just noticed that the worker is "21-year old". Let's forget for now that this worker was actually fired as a result of the automation. What is the real shame for this country in this case that teenagers do not have a fair chance on college education.
Two fundamental principles that any civilized country should have vis-a-vis education should be:
- Only the merits matter in acceptance (passing entrance exams, specific to each institution)
- Instead of students paying the universities, the government should pay all A and B students a stipend, so they concentrate on studies instead of getting tired flipping burgers.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
No one gives a shit what happens to human workers, just like now no one cares about the exploited worker in India or the homeless people in the streets
But apparently most people that are reasonably well off wage slaves today can't get it through their head that they will be the next person no one gives a shit about. They continue support a ridiculous system that promises huge wealth for the guy with the winning lottery ticket.
Jobs are a series of boring repetitive tasks,. They are mindnumbing, dangerous and harmful to society. Most of them shouldn't even exist. Take my own "well" paid deskjob as a QA monkey for STB boxes; These are unethical products that spy on its users, run unfree software full of bugs made by exploited Indian IT specialists and provide less user rights then a VHS recorder from 30 years ago. These things shouldn't even exist anymore because software like Kodi wipes the floor with them on every level. Yet they continue to make millions of dollars for Telecom providers and pay my salary
The jobs of today will be looked at in the future as almost torture, just as how people look now at the jobs of the past and can't help but to feel sorry for the people that had to do them. Yet this idea is perpetuated that "jobs" give you some kind of identity or meaning of life. NO THEY DONT. All jobs need to go as soon as possible and the quicker the better. A shockwave needs to run through society (e.g. millions of transportation jobs need to disappear overnight, not slowly) so people open their eyes and start thinking of real solutions for a world without "jobs". A world were people can do real work out of choice, not forced by their next rent payment
The question going forward is: What happens when the future generations of robots arrive?
The same thing that happens with every other kind of automation. The people will be more productive and some will find new jobs. What is it with all the chicken-little articles about automation? There is plenty of valuable work to be done no matter how much automation we have. Yes some people will be displaced in the short term and for some that will be uncomfortable. It is highly unlikely to occur at a rate detrimental to the economy at large. Most of the automation will simply make workers more effective at their jobs. The very device you are reading this on (a computer) is nothing more than a form of automation which has made you more productive and increased opportunities. This dystopian notion that automation will cause mass unemployment is just nonsense spouted off by people who don't actually understand automation or the problems surrounding it. Automation is not going to be the grim reaper for jobs. Bad economic policy and bad education policy is what you should worry about. A second rate education system or a poorly controlled economy will kill jobs FAR faster than any amount of automation you could possibly imagine.
Soylent Green I hear is hiring ALOT of entry level people. They can't seem to get enough warm bodies through the door.
The bigger questions is, what is happening to all of the human workers at the thousands of businesses Amazon is putting OUT of business with its dumping practices?
You can't stop progress, robots are so much better and cheaper (in the end) than using humans for a lot of things (especially factory/warehouse stuff).
HA! If that were actually true then my job would be a lot easier. My day job is to run a manufacturing plant. I'm an industrial engineer as well as a cost accountant and I make these sorts of decisions regarding automation daily. Your estimation of the cost/benefit of automation is not even close to reality for all but a few corner cases. Robots only make economic sense when you are talking about relatively large unit volumes or certain types of high value precision work or very dangerous jobs. They are not always faster or better and they sure as hell are not always cheaper. Yes that includes "factory/warehouse stuff".
Simple example. My company makes wire harnesses. There isn't a machine in existence that can automate a substantial portion of what we make for anything remotely resembling a reasonable cost. The machines that do exist to make some limited portions of what we manufacturing are either limited to fairly narrow jobs like lead making (cutting, stripping, and crimping wires) or ones that can do wider numbers of jobs cost literally millions of dollars each. Some specialty jobs they do faster or better but not nearly as many as you are probably imagining. To replace humans in general you will have to come up with a robot that is as trainable, as dexterous, and cheaper than a human. Good luck with that because we are no where close to that level of automation much less getting there for economically reasonable cost.
With the current rate of automation we are actually already to late do handle the loss of jobs and how to figure out how we could give those people a better live.
There is no data to support this assertion. Unemployment is well within normal ranges and showing no signs of changing. There has been no measurable long term displacement of workers by robots. What data there is shows that worker displacement is a result of poor economic and education policy, not automation. In places like the US the losses in manufacturing jobs are in reality a function of labor costs, not automation. What happened is the labor intensive jobs went to places with low labor costs. When politicians talk about bringing manufacturing jobs back what they are really promising (though they don't know it) is to lower wages to compete with places like China because that is the ONLY way those jobs are coming back. Do you really want people working for $1-2/hour?
After WWII when the rest of the world was rebuilding for a few decades folks in the US had a remarkable run of economic prosperity in large part due to a lack of competition. Those days are gone and now the US and other prosperous countries are going to have to compete globally. If you think automation is the biggest threat to your economic prosperity then you are delusional. The biggest threat is the 50% of the world's population in Asia (esp China and India) who have been sitting on the economic sidelines for over a century. Now that China has woken up and India is threatening to do so the game is different. You can worry about automation killing jobs in the short run if you want but you are worrying about the wrong thing.
Yeah, they only talked about one worker who was kept, but they can't do that with everyone who has been replaced.
One estimate I read (it was in a dead tree book a couple of years ago, I think something by Nassim Taleb) is that Amazon does with 30,000 workers (at the time) what a million did working at bricks and mortar book retailers.
Where did those millions go? Walmart, Starbucks, various other retailers and over the last several years, the Social Security disability participants have bulged - which are not counted in any unemployment statistic.
The trouble these days is that labor intensive industries that could soak up displaced workers - assuming those employers would even want them - are also low paying part-time (less than 40 hour a week) no benefits shit jobs.
Stacking bins on pallets that goes out to the supermarkets for all those items that does not require refrigeration.
The software knows the layout of the supermarket so the bins that ends up on top, are for those shelves closest to the back entrance and the ones at the bottom are furthest away.
The arm that stacking the bins, are getting them in the right order from the automated warehouse holding the bins.
Humans are (still) involved packing the bins with goods from other bins and pallets from a larger automated warehouse.
The area where goods are moved by humans are a decreasing area for pallets moved by forklifts controlled by humans, but they are just following orders on a screen so they are not making any decisions at all. And more and more of the pallets are in a fully autoautomated warehouse.
In the beginning there were some problems that require humans to see it, and who knows perhaps it still exists. The human controlled forklifts told us that they sometimes got an order to move the same pallet multiple times in a few hours between storage locations. So the system was kinda doing defragmentation until everything was placed like it wanted it to be. :)
Usually the only companies installing industrial robots are ones that are expanding, and an expanding company will rarely lay-off workers when they install automation because they always have something else for the employee to do. Of course an expanding company installing automation will likely be more efficient than an established company, so it's that other established competitor that eventually downsizes and cuts jobs. So you rarely see robots directly replace people. It happens in aggregate across industries and across the economy as a whole.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
and the half breaking windows get free doctors in the jail / prison. and the other half are caped at 29 hours week / are listed as 1099's.
Why everyone just refuse the idea that if we want automation will help to get rid of what we call "work" and have a roof on the top of your head, something to eat and drugs to cure yourself ? The problem is not automation but human greed. Idea of work really changed during history of humanity and that will happen again. Savage Capitalism, the idea that anything can be sold of bought, including health, human dignity, etc is a problem, not machines that make work easier.
in the usa education is easy to get a loan for even with bad credit.
>Yes, people can be retrained. Really depending on age and openmindedness though. But robots can also retrained and in less time for certain things.
Sure. More options for business. They will choose whatever is cheaper option.
The only answer to technological progress vis-a-vis employment problem is 2000 years old: "bread and circuses". Free bread and free circuses for fired. In our days this must include shelter.
>Yes, people can be retrained. Really depending on age and openmindedness though. But robots can also retrained and in less time for certain things.
Sure. More options for business. They will choose whatever is cheaper option.
The only answer to technological progress vis-a-vis employment problem is 2000 years old: "bread and circuses". Free bread and free circuses for fired. In our days this must include shelter.
I'd like to think that we're (the world) smarter than that, and that we (the readers of this forum) are the smart people in the room.
This is an impending problem, and one of the definitions of intelligence is that it is proportional to your planning horizon. We can see this as an impending problem, so let's anticipate the problem and fix it.
Current theories of economics are flawed, being based on assumptions of "infinite" that are no longer true. Consumption isn't infinite, population growth isn't infinite (thankfully, for the sake of our resources), and as a corollary jobs aren't infinite. (Minor other corollaries too; for example, the market for your product isn't infinite.) Productivity rises at an exponential rate (3% growth compounded over time), and has doubled in about the last 40-ish years.
Current theories of economics that extrapolate the past to the future are invalid. Referring to Luddites, sabotaging the looms, throwing your wooden shoes into the looms, or anything that says "it's been OK before, it'll be OK this time" are flawed because they rely on nothing but past performance to predict future behaviour, while future predictions rely on math and assumptions. It's the turkey believing that the farmer will continue to protect and feed it, because that's what the farmer has done for the turkey's entire life.
Current measures of the economy are flawed because they don't include the welfare of the workers. Up to recently, measures of economy have been all about the productivity - the sum total of the profits of businesses, without regard to the welfare of the people. The economy is strong when profits go up. It's flawed because economics is clearly a loop: you need citizens with wealth to purchase products, and the math has to change to reflect that.
Given these flaws in our economics, we need a way forward that doesn't predict in the collapse of civilization.
I know there are at least 5 changes that might work, but it all starts with the smart people in the room.
What changes can we come up with, and how do we encourage these changes?
Without using words such as "only way", "doomed to", and "must".
We need to make changes. How do we do that?
wic / snap / beer / smokes don't work at self checkout.
college time and cost needs to come down.
4 years is way to long for some lines of work and the you must retake classes BS needs to go.
If nobody got displaced, that's a huge win - operating robots means a lot fewer injuries most likely if they no longer have to bend over and pick things up all day.
In the next generation of robots, we can probably get personal home bots for dishwashing and doing laundry.
In an effort to replace and deal with the excess human problem the Exodine 3000 warehouse robot is actually powered with a nutritious electrolyte rich slurry derived from the remains of surplus humans, avoid passing by these warehouses at all costs.
'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
"The wars of the future ... will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots."
Video (24 secs)
Ever watched Robot Wars or Battlebots? Same thing, but with a lot more blood. And all fights will soon be available on Amazon Prime!
#DeleteFacebook
I'm sure no one was laid off, but temp workers, which make up the majority of Amazon warehouse employees, can't be laid off. The "season" ends. The contract expires. They are no longer needed. Since they work for the temp agency, and not Amazon, they were not considered "displaced workers", or even "people".
What we need is a bunch of hackers the re-program these robots to go on strike. Pay the hackers and they will go back to work.
I see Bender sucking down a 40 in front of a liquor store.
Bite my shiny metal ass !
I have a couple of family members that have worked at the Amazon warehouse in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
These are good paying low-skill jobs with benefits and flexible hours. I asked what it's like to work there, and they describe most of their time walking from place to place, pulling things from bins and moving them into other bins. It's not uncommon for them to hit 15-20K steps per day. That's a lot, even if you are used to it.
One of them worked at Nashville's UPS facility and used it for comparison. He said Amazon was much easier. At UPS the humans filled the same role as box-sorting pick-and-place robots. The work was physically exhausting and mind numbing. At amazon, it's physically easier and more mentally engaging.
Opinion: If robots can cut down on the walking by bringing shelves to the workers and carrying finished bins to shipping that would be a tradesman-to-assembly-line type of performance improvement. Algorithms can track product demand and try to get the same shelves to the same people so they can be faster pickers, and also track when a picker is getting bogged out to shift the load to someone else. It's an interesting problem to think about.
Robots are serving as a force multiplier instead of a force replacer? This is how things should be done. Bravo! Now it's time to read the article and see if I'm still happy by the end...
Revolution isn't going to happen. Most people can't even be bothered to seriously vote. Remember the 2016 presidential election? Trump and Clinton totally dominated. America gave itself less than 5% of the vote.
Anyone who thinks these people will revolt, is massively over-estimating how much people care. If you can't show up at the ballot box, you're sure as fuck too slovenly, apathetic, and self-loathing to get off your fat ass and lift an ammo box. Those can be heavy! Risk your life fighting? People are so overwhelmingly cowardly, they're afraid to vote for "spoilers." You telling me that when everything is on the line and your chances of success are vastly smaller, you're going to do something harder?
My fellow Americans, you suck and you're a disgrace to the memory of our country. And every one of you who pretends to care and talks about revolution, you're a poser pussy. You prove it, every single election. Lazy pussy lying posers!
They are terminated.
They are also trapped between 4 walls with a bunch of nasty people.
Feel free to go to jail if you consider it's such an utopia.
So bring on the robots! We need humans to stop doing trivial jobs and start really improving the lives of everyone.
Let's welcome them with open arms by celebrating with a pirate party.
Another thing of note especially in the Amazon case. The workflow was changed from a human-friendly way of doing things to a robotic way. The robots didn't necessarily get any smarter, just the workflow to play to their strengths, and work around any deficiencies.
After hearing countless reports that people are underpaid, overworked, working conditions etc, you'd think people would be happy to have robots replace the humans, so they don't "suffer".
I think you are absolutely right today, but that you're perhaps forgetting that tech doesn't move linearly.
I'm not forgetting that at all. Economics isn't linear either. I think you might be confusing the economics of microchips and software for the economics of manufacturing which is very different. It is REALLY hard and expensive to make general purpose manufacturing devices produce non-trivial special purpose products in (relatively) small batches. The limitations aren't typically technical - they are economic and they are extremely hard to overcome in a vast number of cases.
Robot solutions that today cost millions will at some point cost thousands.
Some will. A lot will not. You are under the misapprehension that economies of scale are in play here that are not in actuality. You are arguing that we can develop an extremely inexpensive, safe, easily programmed, general purpose robot. Cheap enough that it can displace humans in low labor cost countries. We aren't in any danger of reaching such a state of affairs any time soon. (as in within the lifetime of anyone reading this) Yes robots and automation will get cheaper and more capable but they have a loooooooong way to go before humans aren't needed to build stuff. Nobody I know who works in manufacturing is worried at all about robots making humans in manufacturing obsolete.
In my country, a company started selling cheaper and safer robot arms a few years ago. They can't carry as much as the robots at car manufacturing plants, and they aren't as fast. But they don't require a cage, they cost a fraction and the UI for programming them is much, much easier to work with.
And yet they haven't taken the world by storm. Yes there will be progress but humans aren't going to disappear from the equation. Even at a few thousand dollars they still are too expensive for a lot of low volume production. There is a very long tail for how cheap automation has to get before it can bump people out of the equation. It's also hard to achieve economies of scale with automation if you don't have large unit volumes because setup and engineering costs don't enjoy economies of scale at low unit volumes.
Yeah, robotic tech today is still primitive compared to humans. But the future belongs to those who can figure out how to take advantage of these primitive robots.
Automation is anything but primitive even today. The problem isn't the technology but in making the technology cheap. You seem to be grossly underestimating the difficulty of that task. You are quite right that there are riches to be had for those who can control future automation and technology but that is nothing new. There will be impressive progress but I have near as makes no difference zero concern about mass unemployment from automation in my lifetime.
We will always need humans to supervise the robots, deal with unexpected situations that the robots can't figure out, etc. We can pay to train and pay those humans more since the work done is significantly larger than what they could do alone.
And there are a lot of other areas that Amazon can do better at, like quality control and developing stable, consistent products. Importing tons of cheap Chinese items may have expanded Amazon's listings dramatically, but it has also resulted in buyers being unsure of the product in many cases (especially for more niche items that don't have many or any reviews).
Beyond that, the economy is not a zero sum game. Under Trump it is now growing at 3%, which is typical of the US economy (post WW2 average is 2.9% growth rate) https://s3.amazonaws.com/media... in 8 years the economy will have grown roughly 25%. Someone has to make up that growth, and since birth rates aren't what they used to be, robotics is a good way to further leverage and grow the economy without an equivalent growth in the work force.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Companies like Apple invest in more premium products for customers who are willing to pay more. Companies like Amazon focus on the being the lowest-cost provider to win market share.
The warehouse of the future has exactly two employees: one man, and one dog.
The man is there only to feed the dog.
The dog is there to make sure the man doesn't touch anything.
Robots doing all the work. Perfect time for a nap.
This doesn't mean robots didn't displace people. It means robot adoption happened slower than the rate of attrition. They shuffled people around, but make no mistake, there are fewer people.
...Amazon participated in the TV show Undercover Boss a few years back, and one of the days Bezos had to do the package loading job - running all over a warehouse floor. I wonder if the robots are the result of that?
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
If you're an employee of Amazon and 90% of your time isn't spent behind a keyboard, you're on borrowed time. S'all I got to say.
Just think of the automation provided by ancient mainframes compared to doing everything by hand. No resulting unemployment.
Tax law and bureaucratic complexity will simply grow to employ more and more accountants and middle managers. It is the Law of Parkinson.
Automation is the reason we have such complexity today. Without the automation, we could simply not function with the bureaucratic load.
Traditional robots are completely dumb.
But it is now possible for relatively cheap robots to pick parts jumbled up in a bin. That requires very clever software, but what is now cheap computing processors.
It is a game changer. No, they will not suddenly become intelligent. But the scope of what they can do will increase an order of magnitude.
And the robots are, of course, largely made by robots. Their price is falling.
The world is and will change. Faster and faster.
http://www.computersthink.com/
The question isn't what's happening with the 50k workers at amazon, but with the 4-6 million jobs (more on the way) displaced elsewhere. Amazon is absolutely killing malls which used to provide a lot of local jobs.
It's good if we can get less expensive, quality products.
But I have a hard time buying a shirt or pair of pants or major appliance that will last more than a few years. They used to last a decade-- hell- they used to last 2-3 decades.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
They do in Belgium.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
These robots and their minders will be the first against the wall when the Butlerian Jihad comes.
Straight from the Orange Catholic bible: "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."
- Pithy comment goes here.
Something most people don't remember:
A lot of the small businesses were run by scammers, con artists or just plain assholes, even locally. In some cases they were the local monopoly for their particular set of wares. You didn't like that? You had to find someone outside of your town who you could purchase from instead.
Walmart, Amazon, etc turned that on their head. As did other retailers before them (Sears, K-mart, even most of the 'big' 'mall' stores.) And while the faceless asshole companies might have been worse at a macro-level, they generally offered good customer service for a majority of their customer base, or sufficiently low prices to compromise those peoples principles even after a bad experience.
Same applies with Walmart and Amazon today. Many of the 'good' small box resellers were crushed as a result of this, but what really started it was the bad customer service and entitled attitudes of the other local/regional private businesses, who thought they were irreplacable and acted as such to their customerbase.
Your experiences may vary, but I remember the 80s,90s,00s transitions, and I remember a lot of unpleasant small retailers. Then it became unpleasant mid-sized retailers, then it was big retailers. Eventually we will either end up with our government appoitned retailers, or the collapse of that entire industry and a transition to a new model of commerce.