Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#481

Post by cavisne » Tue, May 14, 2019, 4:04 AM UTC

andrewmutz wrote: post #348

nerdponx wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth expanding on this. Because I think it gets lost in the rhetoric, whether deliberately or by accident. A profit-maximizing firm sets prices that maximize its expected profit. This seems tautological, but it's important and I think it's implications aren't appreciated. If your prices are already beating the competition, and you already have a solid reputation for low prices, there is no incentive to continue…

The reason that this tends to lower prices for consumers is that these innovations rarely stay confined to the companies that invent them. If this lowers costs for amazon to fulfill orders, then these techniques tend to get adopted by their competitors. And once adopted by competitors, when everyone's margins have increased, these companies do compete on price. This process doesn't happen immediately but it does happ…

Might not be true as more problems are solved through machine learning. Amazon has or could generate the largest and most diverse dataset to train the object recognition problems needed to automate a warehouse. They also have the end to end pipeline to evaluate accuracy (damaged or incorrect orders, manual intervention needed in the warehouse).

Can a competitor actually catch up without this data?

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#482

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 14, 2019, 4:08 AM UTC

dzmien wrote: post #350

smpetrey wrote: post #303

Anyone parading around like this is bad news has never worked in an assembly line or warehouse job. This might reduce the workforce overall long-term, but honestly this is hard back-breaking long-workday labor. Anything that improves the livelihood of the warehouse workers is a win in my book.

I worked for Amazon in what was then a brand new warehouse for a few months in 2015. I worked 10 hour shifts, from 20:00 to 07:00 (the extra hour was for lunch and breaks). My job was picking orders. It seemed easy at first (and it was, but mentally, not so much). All I had to do was stand in one place while robots brought me pod after endless pod of products. There was nothing to it, and that was the problem. The po…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#483

Post by pryce » Tue, May 14, 2019, 4:28 AM UTC

m3kw9 wrote: post #478

pryce wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we are being honest, this isn't being installed to "improve the livelihood of warehouse workers", it is being installed in anticipation of improving the bottom line for Amazon's shareholders. There may be benefits or detriments to the workforce along the way; considerations like the "wellbeing of the workforce" are effectively given a weight of zero in these decisions. People's values can and will diverge on wheth…

Yes let’s make everything manual in an entire factory

Arguing that we should be honest with ourselves about what precisely motivates corporate decisions to automate in the society we live in is not remotely the same thing as arguing against automation itself; neither in this specific case nor in the more general case (of automation across wider society).

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#484

Post by fastball » Tue, May 14, 2019, 5:04 AM UTC

bad-joke wrote: post #401

fastball wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or how about instead, all these oppressed workers just leave Amazon and form a competitor to Amazon that is a Co-op? Presumably they'll do pretty well since there won't be any big bad corporate overlords to steal the value of their labor.

I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that co-ops are supposedly more profitable than autocratic workplaces. Co-ops still compete in the marketplace but they distribute ownership and profit among the workers in a democratic fashion, typically on the basis of their contribution. The parent comment asked how Amazon could stop systematically oppressing their workers, not how workers could stop being the targets of…

I'm not sure where you are getting the idea that I claimed co-ops are more profitable.

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#485

Post by fastball » Tue, May 14, 2019, 5:07 AM UTC

drewmol wrote: post #217

fastball wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where exactly do you think those increased corporate profits are going?

So I'm misunderstanding the effect? Is the outcome such that the reducion in payroll will lead to increase in profits and then pressumably that profit will be taxed at a minimum of long term capital gains rate when returned to shareholders?

No, it's just that you are only now bringing in capital gains, when that's actually pretty important. If all these corporate profits are going to shareholders, who are then taxed on capital gains, don't you think that's a little bit higher than the 1% you were quoting?

So maybe if you actually finished doing the math instead of stopping in the middle, you'd see that automation isn't the tax loss you're making it out to be.

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#486

Post by fastball » Tue, May 14, 2019, 5:10 AM UTC

ed_balls wrote: post #169

fastball wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which, given the fact that Walmart is experimenting with the exact same robots, it seems like there is.

That's oligopoly. True competition needs to have many different options e.g. food. I can go out to a restaurant, order something or opt-out from the market and buy in a shop and cook it myself. But straight from the farmer or I could even grow it myself.

Ok, still seems like we're good then?

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#487

Post by jtolmar » Tue, May 14, 2019, 5:14 AM UTC

goatlover wrote: post #471

jtolmar wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automation itself is a good thing. The way our economy is structured to respond to automation is predictably bad for the workers though. Consider a hypothetical world where, every time a job was automated away, the person who lost their job got a pension equal to the difference in operating costs (they were paid $15/hr, the machines cost $6/hr, this person gets a $9/hr pension). In this world everyone looks forward t…

Not sure I follow this logic. Are you saying everyone tries to have their job eliminated so they can get paid less money to not work? Some people would like that, but a majority couldn't justify the reduction in their standard of living. And there are quite a few people who find work meaningful and wouldn't want to be paid to not work. I do understand the point about people being upset at not receiving a pension for…

I threw that part in there because I was expecting someone to confuse themselves into thinking there's no motivation for progress under such a system.

Under the hypothetical, even if you want your current level of pay, you may want to automate yourself out, because that frees you up to spend your time on some other job, getting both paychecks.

(And if you really didn't want to have your job automated away... well it still works out better for you than our system of firing you and then nothing.)

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#488

Post by robotresearcher » Tue, May 14, 2019, 5:28 AM UTC

gridlockd wrote: post #79

amedvednikov wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI. Then we can be gleeful about more automation.

A UBI in the salary range of an Amazon warehouse worker would be on the order of 1/3rd GDP.

For context, Medicare and Social security are each about $1 trillion/yr for a total of about 10% of GDP today.

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#489

Post by hobofan » Tue, May 14, 2019, 5:51 AM UTC

cavisne wrote: post #481

andrewmutz wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason that this tends to lower prices for consumers is that these innovations rarely stay confined to the companies that invent them. If this lowers costs for amazon to fulfill orders, then these techniques tend to get adopted by their competitors. And once adopted by competitors, when everyone's margins have increased, these companies do compete on price. This process doesn't happen immediately but it does happ…

Might not be true as more problems are solved through machine learning. Amazon has or could generate the largest and most diverse dataset to train the object recognition problems needed to automate a warehouse. They also have the end to end pipeline to evaluate accuracy (damaged or incorrect orders, manual intervention needed in the warehouse). Can a competitor actually catch up without this data?

Sure. The usual strategy would be a joint venture between the second, third, etc. biggest competitors to share the development (and relevant data) for such a technology.

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#490

Post by dorgo » Tue, May 14, 2019, 8:07 AM UTC

pryce wrote: post #465

smpetrey wrote: post #303

Anyone parading around like this is bad news has never worked in an assembly line or warehouse job. This might reduce the workforce overall long-term, but honestly this is hard back-breaking long-workday labor. Anything that improves the livelihood of the warehouse workers is a win in my book.

If we are being honest, this isn't being installed to "improve the livelihood of warehouse workers", it is being installed in anticipation of improving the bottom line for Amazon's shareholders. There may be benefits or detriments to the workforce along the way; considerations like the "wellbeing of the workforce" are effectively given a weight of zero in these decisions. People's values can and will diverge on wheth…

Of course, nobody tries to only "improve the livelihood of warehouse workers".

Isn't the idea behind economy that if everybody tries to improve their bottom line then everybody wins (even if it was not intended)? And this story seems to support this idea.