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Amazon's humanoid robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate

businessinsider.com

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Re: Amazon's humanoid robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate

#41

Post by lotsofpulp »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #3
prepend wrote: post #2

I expect workers like this. Warehouse picking is grueling work and no one really likes it per se. So having a robot do it is good to allow humans to do other things. I don’t think the solution is to keep grueling jobs or pay more to make people do things they don’t want to do. Of course more money is good, but at the end of the day, it’s a repetitive job that doesn’t require much thought. What’s interesting is that i…

Indeed, Amazon should automate it, and we'll collectively tax the automation to prevent all the gains going to shareholders. Profits still made, just not too much.

The automation is already taxed. It’s called capital gains tax, or income tax, or property tax (wealth tax). Simply changing those tax percentages/formulas will result in the change you want.

Re: Amazon's humanoid robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate

#42

Post by nurtbo »

prepend wrote: post #2

I expect workers like this. Warehouse picking is grueling work and no one really likes it per se. So having a robot do it is good to allow humans to do other things. I don’t think the solution is to keep grueling jobs or pay more to make people do things they don’t want to do. Of course more money is good, but at the end of the day, it’s a repetitive job that doesn’t require much thought. What’s interesting is that i…

Except the robots are currently handling returning empty totes, so humans spend more time picking.

Re: Amazon's humanoid robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate

#43

Post by Tade0 »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #13

When will the first robot commit suicide? "Don't worry, they're just robots they are not sentient!" I can picture engineers racing to block this behavior and the robots coming up with ever more elaborate suicide methods.

To paraphrase one of my professors: "I wouldn't be too worried about a potential AGI making us its slaves - it's unlikely to be anything remotely like us - we can't predict what it might want, if anything at all. Who knows, maybe its greatest ambition will be to calculate the most precise approximation of the number Pi?"

Re: Amazon's humanoid robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate

#44

Post by crote »

bigyikes wrote: post #24
pclmulqdq wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is almost certainly far ahead of Tesla in robotics AI. They have been at the forefront of that field for >10 years.

This is not obvious. We should not discount the data collection and training infrastructure that Tesla has created. It’s very possible that their massive fleet of robots on wheels gives them a significant leg up.

Tesla has a mediocre "self"-driving car, and a robot primarily designed for looks which seems to be on a level achievable by the average university student team.

How is training data primarily about things like recognizing traffic signs going to be of any use when the hard problems to solve are stuff like picking up a box without crushing it?

Re: Amazon's humanoid robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate

#45

Post by hkpack »

quickthrowman wrote: post #33
karaterobot wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do these laid off warehouse pickers do instead? Go back to their old jobs as cloud infrastructure architects, or hedge fund managers? I agree that most people don't want to work as pickers, and I think that's the point: in general, if you've got a shitty job, it's because it's the best available to you. They don't want to work that job, true, but they sort of have to, and if it goes away they'll have to get an e…

> What do these laid off warehouse pickers do instead? What did all of the laid off agricultural workers do when farming was mechanized and industrialized? This isn’t the first time we’re facing technology taking jobs away from people.

I see this thinking all the time, that if something worked ok in the past, then it is absolutely guaranteed to work next time.

And it is absolutely not. People live as they are protected by some divine power over the consequences of their collective actions.

Re: Amazon's humanoid robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate

#46

Post by crote »

gafage wrote: post #4
toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, Amazon should automate it, and we'll collectively tax the automation to prevent all the gains going to shareholders. Profits still made, just not too much.

What's the point of automating stuff for Amazon if then the gains are taxed?

Why would a human get a job when they have to pay income tax?

Re: Amazon's humanoid robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate

#47

Post by bannedbybros »

prepend wrote: post #2

I expect workers like this. Warehouse picking is grueling work and no one really likes it per se. So having a robot do it is good to allow humans to do other things. I don’t think the solution is to keep grueling jobs or pay more to make people do things they don’t want to do. Of course more money is good, but at the end of the day, it’s a repetitive job that doesn’t require much thought. What’s interesting is that i…

[dead]

Re: Amazon's humanoid robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate

#49

Post by tomp »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #3
prepend wrote: post #2

I expect workers like this. Warehouse picking is grueling work and no one really likes it per se. So having a robot do it is good to allow humans to do other things. I don’t think the solution is to keep grueling jobs or pay more to make people do things they don’t want to do. Of course more money is good, but at the end of the day, it’s a repetitive job that doesn’t require much thought. What’s interesting is that i…

Indeed, Amazon should automate it, and we'll collectively tax the automation to prevent all the gains going to shareholders. Profits still made, just not too much.

Or we could all simply enjoy the benefits of capitalism and market competition instead.

People used to fight wars for salt. Now it’s given away for free by restaurants.

Capitalism results in abundance. Or you can tax / centrally manage it away into scarcity.

Re: Amazon's humanoid robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate

#50

Post by jrumbut »

Tade0 wrote: post #38
karaterobot wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do these laid off warehouse pickers do instead? Go back to their old jobs as cloud infrastructure architects, or hedge fund managers? I agree that most people don't want to work as pickers, and I think that's the point: in general, if you've got a shitty job, it's because it's the best available to you. They don't want to work that job, true, but they sort of have to, and if it goes away they'll have to get an e…

> What do these laid off warehouse pickers do instead? Whatever they eventually go on doing anyway, considering Amazon reportedly has a crazy turnover rate of 150% per year: https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardsegal/2022/10/24/amazon-r... What value is a job you can't really hold on to for even a year because it's so gruelling?

A sudden rush of so many similarly situated workers is going to be a very difficult situation.

The robots may be good but the cost of the social upheaval should be factored in to the cost of their operation. Otherwise the rest of us are paying for the externalities of these devices and incentivizing the displacement of workers.

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