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Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

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Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#31

Post by lm28469 »

crazygringo wrote: post #26
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 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.

Is this the end game of humanity though ? Let's create more bs jobs so that people can continue to afford new shiny gadgets ?

> ALWAYS

Earth is a finite environment, with finite resources, at some point it won't scale anymore, especially with today's ecological concerns. The world isn't going to run on cells phones and TV shows indefinitely, and even if, I think we should strive for more than that

> People just always want better things and will work for them.

It hasn't always been the case and it won't be forever, capitalism is fairly new, I hope we'll reconcile with our humanity at some point, there is more to life than working 50%+ of our awake time to watch netflix and buy iphones

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#32

Post by Ericson2314 »

bstar77 wrote: post #13
immmmmm wrote: post #10

will they unionize?

I don't think Amazon cares much about the long team warehouse worker situation because they know it will be automated very soon. I'm curious if workers unionizing could negatively affect their automation aspirations.

They certainly act as if they care. They should automate as these shit jobs shouldn't exist, and if workplace is organizing ensures the automation becomes economical, that's a good thing.

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#34

Post by Pokepokalypse »

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…

A fact of life of job-training programs, is that you can't force someone to upskill. (see: coal miners). I think there's generally a strong culture of continuous personal improvement among millenials, and probably late gen-X-ers as well.

But here I am, later in my career, and I don't honestly see the reward of upskilling. For the time, money, and effort it would take. There's not a lot of things I'd rather be doing than what I'm doing now. And some of those things are maybe 5-10 years of training down the road. And then I'd be starting out at a Junior-level in pay, which is completely un-doable in my situation.

Of course, I'm not obsolete in what I'm doing yet. So I don't have THAT choice to make.

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#36

Post by amelius »

anonu wrote: post #20

The Boston Dynamics PR machine is in full swing. A recent acquisition, the 60 minutes interview last weekend, this recent press release... Seems like they need to figure out how to make some revenues.

The problem is they based all their tech on old-fashioned control theory, which will have its ass kicked by deep-learning-based tech when the first serious competitor comes along.

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#38

Post by wonderwonder »

We are rapidly approaching the automation of most repetitive human labor. Warehouse workers, truck/uber/cab drivers. Fast food workers, etc. What happens when these jobs go away? Historically technology has always provided a means of replacing those lost jobs but I think we are reaching an event horizon now where all of that changes. What happens to all of the people whose positions are replaced? I think we are teetering on the brink of a need for UBI, a massive change the world style project (populate another planet or something on that scale) to keep people engaged, WW3, or mass unrest on a scale we have not seen before. Or perhaps and most likely we just ignore the newly poor and homeless and those of us that can continue to accumulate things and tssk tssk at the people that wont pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#39

Post by sandworm101 »

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.

Robots dont get ill? Talk to anyone who maintains complex moving machinery such as aircraft or industrial machines. They have bad days. They have lifespans and old age. Some develop long-term diseases (corrosion). Some even get viruses. They can be down for months, even years, as such faults are corrected.

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#40

Post by thescriptkiddie »

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…

Guaranteeing employment by creating bullshit jobs is one of the big mistakes made by the late USSR. Doing so represented a fundamental shift in ideals from the egalitarian "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" to the puritanical "the who does not work, neither shall he eat". I keep thinking recently that the US looks more and more like the old jokes about the USSR.

There is no fundamental reason that you need to "keep people busy" with unproductive labor. Due to increases of productivity, we could all be working 20 hour weeks today and enjoying the same standard of living as 50 years ago.

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