Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation • Hacker News Board

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#21

Post by chiefalchemist » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:07 PM UTC

tachyonbeam wrote: post #17

cs702 wrote: post #6

It's not difficult to imagine ultra-efficient warehouses that have no need for physical human labor, within our lifetime. Exciting stuff. But I have to ask: Can this thing fight queen xenomorphs? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWJDtVmGenc

I feel like, for a long while, you'd still need people to clean the place, to maintain the robots, install new equipment. There's also going to be occasional messes. Box was badly taped, falls apart, shampoo bottles get crushed on the floor, etc. Also, if you have a robot that puts things in boxes, you need someone to restock the boxes, unless you have another special-purpose robot just for that too. I'm sure we can…

Save? Plenty. It means less parking spots, less HR, less toilets, and so on. They don't get ill, don't have good days and bad, they are fully trained the second they start, and so on.

The most difficult part of business is the human element. For better or worse these mitigate that. The resources freed up from addressing the human element can focus on other opportunities.

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#22

Post by lm28469 » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:08 PM UTC

djrogers wrote: post #16

lm28469 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harder to imagine a society in which we have no need for jobs though Unless we get something like UBI we'll always need shitty job to keep people busy. Automation for the sake of automation doesn't bring much if 70% of the population is still working 8 hours a day 5 days a week on more and more useless tasks. This isn't even talking about the fact that we're increasing productivity per unit of time but never reducing…

> we'll always need shitty job to keep people busy. That's a pretty darned condescending attitude to harbor there. I know a lot of people who have what you'd call s#### jobs, and they're happy, fulfilled, and proud of the work they do.

Are they ? Amazon warehouse workers ? People working in slaughterhouses ? Starbucks "baristas" working 3 jobs at once while they're execs use every trick in the book to avoid taxes and make literal billions in profit ? Min wage people working insane hours to barely afford life ?

I'm the condescending condescending one ? They're being shat on by capitalism.

I wish only one thing, for their lives to get better. I'm not going to lie and pretend people working 8+ hours a day, doing back breaking repetitive tasks, with no real possibilities of evolving their career are living the dream... all of that to get paid wages that barely let them afford a decent life and never let them escape living pay-check to pay-check

They've been tricked into being proud slaves, that all the pride there is in there. We could do so much better

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#23

Post by lumost » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:15 PM UTC

anyonecancode wrote: post #18

lm28469 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harder to imagine a society in which we have no need for jobs though Unless we get something like UBI we'll always need shitty job to keep people busy. Automation for the sake of automation doesn't bring much if 70% of the population is still working 8 hours a day 5 days a week on more and more useless tasks. This isn't even talking about the fact that we're increasing productivity per unit of time but never reducing…

> Unless we get something like UBI we'll always need shitty job to keep people busy I find myself often making this assumption too, but I wonder if it's warranted? A "shit" job is often shorthand for a job you can grab someone off the street and more or less have them start working, an "unskilled" job. But the fact that pretty much anyone can do a job isn't the same as saying that someone doing a "shit" job is only c…

I think the question is what need does further economic development satisfy for the totality of the population.

UBI can ensure no one has an unmet need for basics, but many people with nothing to do would likely lead to unmet fulfillment and security needs. UBI is unlikely to fund digital nomads in the short term, and unbounded travel isn't for everyone. The classic work for independence mindset that drove early settlers also becomes permanently non-viable.

I'm a fan of UBI, but I think it brings us closer to asking the question of how do we structure a society where a 40 hour work week is optional? what will people who are satisfied with the basics do?

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#24

Post by zozin » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:15 PM UTC

Right on time for Amazon's union vote!! I support people's right to organize, but warehouse workers are in for a rude awakening. Amazon's warehouse "partners" are just like Uber's drivers: intended as stopgap labor before AI can stock shelves/pick items/drive cars; except that stocking a warehouse/picking items is orders of magnitude easier to accomplish than autonomous driving. I look to Amazon to start shedding jobs by the tens of thousand in the near future.

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#25

Post by spijdar » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:16 PM UTC

chiefalchemist wrote: post #21

tachyonbeam wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like, for a long while, you'd still need people to clean the place, to maintain the robots, install new equipment. There's also going to be occasional messes. Box was badly taped, falls apart, shampoo bottles get crushed on the floor, etc. Also, if you have a robot that puts things in boxes, you need someone to restock the boxes, unless you have another special-purpose robot just for that too. I'm sure we can…

Save? Plenty. It means less parking spots, less HR, less toilets, and so on. They don't get ill, don't have good days and bad, they are fully trained the second they start, and so on. The most difficult part of business is the human element. For better or worse these mitigate that. The resources freed up from addressing the human element can focus on other opportunities.

I mean, won't robots need repairs/maintenance, "training" in the form of programming or tweaking parameters, and other things?

These may have lesser costs than their human equivalents, but I don't think they're magically zero-maintenance.

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#26

Post by crazygringo » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

lm28469 wrote: post #12

cs702 wrote: post #6

It's not difficult to imagine ultra-efficient warehouses that have no need for physical human labor, within our lifetime. Exciting stuff. But I have to ask: Can this thing fight queen xenomorphs? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWJDtVmGenc

Harder to imagine a society in which we have no need for jobs though Unless we get something like UBI we'll always need shitty job to keep people busy. Automation for the sake of automation doesn't bring much if 70% of the population is still working 8 hours a day 5 days a week on more and more useless tasks. This isn't even talking about the fact that we're increasing productivity per unit of time but never reducing…

> we'll always need shitty job to keep people busy

People have been worried we'll run out of jobs ever since farming started to decline from being 90% of jobs.

People will always want better things, whether cell phones or TV shows. There are ALWAYS jobs to produce those better things.

There's no need to "keep people busy". People just always want better things and will work for them.

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#27

Post by lm28469 » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:25 PM UTC

anyonecancode wrote: post #18

lm28469 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harder to imagine a society in which we have no need for jobs though Unless we get something like UBI we'll always need shitty job to keep people busy. Automation for the sake of automation doesn't bring much if 70% of the population is still working 8 hours a day 5 days a week on more and more useless tasks. This isn't even talking about the fact that we're increasing productivity per unit of time but never reducing…

> Unless we get something like UBI we'll always need shitty job to keep people busy I find myself often making this assumption too, but I wonder if it's warranted? A "shit" job is often shorthand for a job you can grab someone off the street and more or less have them start working, an "unskilled" job. But the fact that pretty much anyone can do a job isn't the same as saying that someone doing a "shit" job is only c…

> What if we did get to a point where nearly all the tedious, unskilled jobs were done by machines -- what exactly is the barrier to taking all the humans previously doing those jobs and leveling them up to do jobs machines can't do as well?

Because history repeats itself. Yesterday's factory workers are now slaves of the service/gig economy. These things have been discussed in basically any economy book since the 60s. Automation in itself just moves the problem, if there are no societal changes to assist it you're just running in circles. Politicians of the 70s were promising 5 hours work days and 3 days of work per week thanks to automation, last time I checked we work as much as back then (if not more because retirement age is going up)

> It seems the barrier is that generally it's not economically beneficial to do so

It's not economical because in today's world you need an army of cheap labor to generate big money for the sharks on top. And this is exactly why you'll always have shitty jobs paying the bare minimum for insane amount of work, it'll take a looooong time before a 7$ an hour worker gets more expensive than a robot for any task remotely difficult.

I'm not saying UBI would solve these issues, or any at all really, it's just something we should at least give a shot. But the problem is that in our societies being a worthy human being = working 8 hours a day 5 days a week, and as long as this is default we'll never get rid of shitty jobs, no matter how much we automate, we'll always have to find new occupations for people, and by definition these jobs will be more and more abstract, less and less stimulating, &c.

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#28

Post by sandworm101 » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:29 PM UTC

lm28469 wrote: post #22

djrogers wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we'll always need shitty job to keep people busy. That's a pretty darned condescending attitude to harbor there. I know a lot of people who have what you'd call s#### jobs, and they're happy, fulfilled, and proud of the work they do.

Are they ? Amazon warehouse workers ? People working in slaughterhouses ? Starbucks "baristas" working 3 jobs at once while they're execs use every trick in the book to avoid taxes and make literal billions in profit ? Min wage people working insane hours to barely afford life ? I'm the condescending condescending one ? They're being shat on by capitalism. I wish only one thing, for their lives to get better. I'm not…

The condesention is in the term "keep people busy". It is a suggestion that thier jobs are unproductive busy work. They arent. A less condesending phrase might be "keep them employed" or "keep them in work".

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#29

Post by Ericson2314 » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

zozin wrote: post #24

Right on time for Amazon's union vote!! I support people's right to organize, but warehouse workers are in for a rude awakening. Amazon's warehouse "partners" are just like Uber's drivers: intended as stopgap labor before AI can stock shelves/pick items/drive cars; except that stocking a warehouse/picking items is orders of magnitude easier to accomplish than autonomous driving. I look to Amazon to start shedding job…

The more automation happens, the more desperately cheap labor there is to disincentive further automation. Organizing to raise workplace standards is in fact necessary to ensure the shit jobs are entirely eliminated.

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#30

Post by munificent » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

anyonecancode wrote: post #18

lm28469 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harder to imagine a society in which we have no need for jobs though Unless we get something like UBI we'll always need shitty job to keep people busy. Automation for the sake of automation doesn't bring much if 70% of the population is still working 8 hours a day 5 days a week on more and more useless tasks. This isn't even talking about the fact that we're increasing productivity per unit of time but never reducing…

> Unless we get something like UBI we'll always need shitty job to keep people busy I find myself often making this assumption too, but I wonder if it's warranted? A "shit" job is often shorthand for a job you can grab someone off the street and more or less have them start working, an "unskilled" job. But the fact that pretty much anyone can do a job isn't the same as saying that someone doing a "shit" job is only c…

> what exactly is the barrier to taking all the humans previously doing those jobs and leveling them up to do jobs machines can't do as well?

One challenge with this that I rarely hear talked about is that many people aren't inclined to do those jobs. Here on HN, we tacitly assume that everyone loves intellectually challenging, mentally complex work, but that's simply not the case for many people. Lots of people prefer to use their hands, or their bodies, or to do jobs that are primarily social. Many (most?) people don't consider thinking to be a deep source of joy and satisfaction in their lives.

When we automate away the skilled manual labor jobs, we implicitly say that the only kind of being human that has value is brain work, but that is an absolute aberration in human history. For most of Homo sapiens evolutionary history, it was just as important to have physical and manual skills.