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Humans Are Still Crucial To Amazon's Fulfillment Process (technologyreview.com)
Amazon's fleet of automated warehouse robots, now more than 100,000 machines strong, is working alongside human employees to help meet the e-commerce giant's massive fulfillment demand. From a report: The company's robots carry inventory around massive warehouse floors, compiling all the items for a customer's order and reducing the need for human interaction with the products. But the chief technologist of Amazon Robotics, Tye Brady, insists that these robots are enhancing human efficiencies rather than eliminating warehouse jobs.
Amazon has been going full steam ahead when it comes to hiring and now employs over 500,000 people. Brady views the robots as necessary to this growth. "When there are tens of thousands of orders going on simultaneously, you are getting beyond what a human can do," he told the audience at MIT Technology Review's first EmTech Next conference today. Humans still provide necessary skills in the fulfillment process, like dexterity, adaptiveness, and plain old common sense. For example, when some popcorn butter accidentally fell off a pod in a fulfillment center, it got squished, creating a big buttery mess in the middle of the floor. The curious robots didn't know how to handle the situation but wanted to go check it out. "The robots were driving through it, and they'd slip and get an encoder error," says Brady.
Amazon has been going full steam ahead when it comes to hiring and now employs over 500,000 people. Brady views the robots as necessary to this growth. "When there are tens of thousands of orders going on simultaneously, you are getting beyond what a human can do," he told the audience at MIT Technology Review's first EmTech Next conference today. Humans still provide necessary skills in the fulfillment process, like dexterity, adaptiveness, and plain old common sense. For example, when some popcorn butter accidentally fell off a pod in a fulfillment center, it got squished, creating a big buttery mess in the middle of the floor. The curious robots didn't know how to handle the situation but wanted to go check it out. "The robots were driving through it, and they'd slip and get an encoder error," says Brady.
Are they really programmed to be curious?
Or is someone just anthropomorphizing them to make them seem cute and cuddly?
>The curious robots didn't know how to handle the situation but wanted to go check it out.
Is this not an egregious case of anthropomorphism?
Amazons little screwjack robots are not curious, and I am pretty sure the system does not send robots to go rubbernecking when there is a problem in the system.
Apparently the editors at Technology Review are neither technologically savvy, nor good reviewers.
"Proximity to wonder has blunted our perception and appreciation of it" --Tim Hartnell in 'Exploring ARTIFICIAL INTELLI