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Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

#61

Post by dhosek »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #60
exitb wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jobs are a byproduct of capital owners needing labor to sell things and services with a profit margin, so they can buy the good stuff. I’d argue that once the capital owners possess the technology that brings the cost of labor near zero, they will have no need for an economy at all, not to mention other people - unless it’s something more akin to a zoo.

> once the capital owners possess the technology that brings the cost of labor near zero Most Americans are capital owners. You’re describing a world in which most Americans live in a utopia.

A quick google says that 53% of Americans own publicly traded stock, but that means that 47% do not. There will be some fraction of that 47% who have their own businesses, but I’m guessing that these would be people at the bottom end of the business scale. Would it really be fair to call the guys driving a truck through the alleys collecting crap metal capital owners who would live in a utopia?

The same article that cites the 53% number also says that the top 10% of income earners own 70% of the stock market. That doesn’t really sound like a recipe for utopia.

Re: Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

#62

Post by quaintdev »

air7 wrote: post #52

It's clear that technological development creates a shift in jobs, i.e some jobs are lost, but new ones are created as a result. Whether the total #jobs increases or decreases is debatable. The issue that I see addressed less often is that the new jobs require by definition, a higher skill set. (You wouldn't displace 100 manual labor workers with a machine that requires 105 workers to maintain). So by definition, the…

It's time we take on bigger and harder problems to solve. Living on another planet is a hard problem but only one company is working on that. We need multiple such companies tackling bigger problems. Solving climate change, dealing with plastic are other bigger problems.

I beleive there's no shortage of jobs. What if we start cleaning earth or reverse effects of human civilization on earth to make it more sustainable. The amount of people needed for that job are huge but we can't pay them at all because how our economies are structured. We need tectonic shift in how the world works today. Machines are taking human jobs, good. Now humans are free to do the work which machines can't do.

Re: Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

#63

Post by wolverine876 »

air7 wrote: post #52

It's clear that technological development creates a shift in jobs, i.e some jobs are lost, but new ones are created as a result. Whether the total #jobs increases or decreases is debatable. The issue that I see addressed less often is that the new jobs require by definition, a higher skill set. (You wouldn't displace 100 manual labor workers with a machine that requires 105 workers to maintain). So by definition, the…

> The issue that I see addressed less often is that the new jobs require by definition, a higher skill set. (You wouldn't displace 100 manual labor workers with a machine that requires 105 workers to maintain). So by definition, the average intelligence requirement for jobs increases over time (though never stated directly). This means that as time and technology progress, a growing percentage of people will have no jobs that they are capable of doing.

You might look up what economics has to say; this issue is well-addressed there. Some fundamentals:

The comment above assumes a static marketplace - the same technology, needs, etc. - and one that addresses the entirety of economic demand, rather than a dynamic market where those things change and resources are scarce (thus when resources become available, they are applied to other unfilled needs).

For example, which skills are in demand changes but there is still growing demand: If you look at the jobs performed 100 years ago, you'll see that most of them are no long needed. Yet not only are most people employed today, we have ~3-4x as many people - most of the jobs disappeared, yet, 3-4x people have jobs.

And yes, a growing economy requires higher-skilled work, but that's good because that work comes with higher pay.

Re: Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

#64

Post by genedan »

air7 wrote: post #52

It's clear that technological development creates a shift in jobs, i.e some jobs are lost, but new ones are created as a result. Whether the total #jobs increases or decreases is debatable. The issue that I see addressed less often is that the new jobs require by definition, a higher skill set. (You wouldn't displace 100 manual labor workers with a machine that requires 105 workers to maintain). So by definition, the…

Technology can also reduce the skills needed for jobs. For example, you no longer need to have an entire city's streets memorized to be a taxi driver.

Re: Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

#65

Post by wolverine876 »

quaintdev wrote: post #62
air7 wrote: post #52

It's clear that technological development creates a shift in jobs, i.e some jobs are lost, but new ones are created as a result. Whether the total #jobs increases or decreases is debatable. The issue that I see addressed less often is that the new jobs require by definition, a higher skill set. (You wouldn't displace 100 manual labor workers with a machine that requires 105 workers to maintain). So by definition, the…

It's time we take on bigger and harder problems to solve. Living on another planet is a hard problem but only one company is working on that. We need multiple such companies tackling bigger problems. Solving climate change, dealing with plastic are other bigger problems. I beleive there's no shortage of jobs. What if we start cleaning earth or reverse effects of human civilization on earth to make it more sustainable…

> Living on another planet is a hard problem but only one company is working on that.

There's an organization called NASA working on it.

Re: Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

#66

Post by karaterobot »

air7 wrote: post #52

It's clear that technological development creates a shift in jobs, i.e some jobs are lost, but new ones are created as a result. Whether the total #jobs increases or decreases is debatable. The issue that I see addressed less often is that the new jobs require by definition, a higher skill set. (You wouldn't displace 100 manual labor workers with a machine that requires 105 workers to maintain). So by definition, the…

Wait a minute. Higher skill jobs? For at least a decade, the place jobs shifted to was Amazon. If you lost your job because Amazon put your company out of business, you could get a worse, more humiliating job working at an Amazon warehouse, or as an Amazon driver. It was not higher skill jobs the market shifted to, it was Nomadland jobs. Now that Amazon is switching to robots, where are those people Amazon is putting out of work supposed to go?

Re: Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

#67

Post by wolverine876 »

techdmn wrote: post #20

About 20 years ago I was a programmer at a manufacturing company. I worked on a project to automate part of materials requirements planning. The woman who was in charge of it was spending about 20 hours per week wrangling Excel spreadsheets to figure out what materials they needed. It was all based on data we had: inventory, orders, etc. A few weeks later, and with a fair amount of her help, I'd automated the whole t…

> That project took half a job out of the economy. A decent one at that, a nice cushy desk job.

Or it allowed the employee to shift to more valuable, interesting work rather than menial tasks that could easily be done by a computer.

Re: Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

#69

Post by layer8 »

genedan wrote: post #64
air7 wrote: post #52

It's clear that technological development creates a shift in jobs, i.e some jobs are lost, but new ones are created as a result. Whether the total #jobs increases or decreases is debatable. The issue that I see addressed less often is that the new jobs require by definition, a higher skill set. (You wouldn't displace 100 manual labor workers with a machine that requires 105 workers to maintain). So by definition, the…

Technology can also reduce the skills needed for jobs. For example, you no longer need to have an entire city's streets memorized to be a taxi driver.

I don’t think there was ever a taxi driver shortage because city streets are too difficult to memorize.

Re: Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

#70

Post by [deleted] »

simonw wrote: post #59
techdmn wrote: post #20

About 20 years ago I was a programmer at a manufacturing company. I worked on a project to automate part of materials requirements planning. The woman who was in charge of it was spending about 20 hours per week wrangling Excel spreadsheets to figure out what materials they needed. It was all based on data we had: inventory, orders, etc. A few weeks later, and with a fair amount of her help, I'd automated the whole t…

I have been contributing to open source software for more than 20 years. My contributions have always been to help save other developers time. How does the impact from that on jobs differ from the impact had by AI tools like LLMs or robotic automation? It certainly /feels/ different, but I'm having a little bit of trouble explaining why.

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