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

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

#91

Post by gnz11 »

exitb wrote: post #54
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…

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.

> they will have no need for an economy at all

Who is going to buy all of their crap then?

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

#92

Post by inglor_cz »

layer8 wrote: post #69
genedan wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Prior to the advent of GPS, taxi drivers in many cities were tested on their orientation skills and had to memorize a lot of streets. I would be surprised if no one ever failed this part of the exam.

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

#93

Post by karaterobot »

ranger_danger wrote: post #88
karaterobot wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's the point.

Not by my reading of the original comment. Seems like they're saying that layoffs result in higher skilled jobs.

And here's my basis for that conclusion:

> The issue that I see addressed less often is that the new jobs require by definition, a higher skill set.

And what I'm saying is that there may not be new jobs, and if they are they may be lower skill jobs if history is any indication.

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

#94

Post by ben_w »

pjmlp wrote: post #84
ben_w wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't say much about that either way, as Amazon in particular already had a known problem of running out of people willing to work for them: https://www.vox.com/recode/23170900/leaked-amazon-memo-wareh... The last 200 years of automation being followed by new jobs is slightly stronger evidence that further automation will lead to new jobs, but I don't see any way that could remain true once AI is actually human per…

It turns out that for the time being robots don't complain to be handled like slaves. The real problem is when others follow Amazon in scale, leaving humans to survive in a new order.

> The real problem is when others follow Amazon in scale, leaving humans to survive in a new order.

No, the problem is if humans in the set of those who have to work are able to keep ahead of the creation of new automation.

UBI short-circuits the problem because then nobody would need to work. "Who pays for UBI?" you may well ask… well, Amazon can't ship anything when nobody has any money to buy stuff with.

Separately from that, AI currently needs a lot of examples to learn from, relative to humans, so "business as usual" with no further AI breakthroughs will mean lots of people shifting employment every few years. That scenario doesn't force the world economy to choose between UBI and collapsing due to all the jobs being automated and therefore nobody having any money to buy the products made or delivered by the automation.

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

#95

Post by robofanatic »

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 a lot of unknowns in that and ROI can take very very long time. Not many people can or are willing to take that risk. If that one company is successful then you’ll see that space flooded with new companies.

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

#96

Post by ben_w »

0xedd wrote: post #83
ben_w wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't say much about that either way, as Amazon in particular already had a known problem of running out of people willing to work for them: https://www.vox.com/recode/23170900/leaked-amazon-memo-wareh... The last 200 years of automation being followed by new jobs is slightly stronger evidence that further automation will lead to new jobs, but I don't see any way that could remain true once AI is actually human per…

My guess it has to do with shit conditions. I mean, shit break must be off the clock? F that.

Likewise, but "we pissed everyone off and they refuse to work for us any more so we had to invent and manufacture robots at a huge and expensive scale" is very different from "we made robots for funsies with our big pile of money and you're all redundant now".

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

#97

Post by Tyr42 »

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…

By that logic every backhoe constructed removes hundreds of jobs of men with shovels.

But we instead build.mpre and bigger things using our tools.

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

#98

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

ben_w wrote: post #79
pjmlp wrote: post #68

So much for IA helping to create jobs.

Doesn't say much about that either way, as Amazon in particular already had a known problem of running out of people willing to work for them: https://www.vox.com/recode/23170900/leaked-amazon-memo-wareh... The last 200 years of automation being followed by new jobs is slightly stronger evidence that further automation will lead to new jobs, but I don't see any way that could remain true once AI is actually human per…

They certainly have no shortage of recruiters with weird ass names to spam me.

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

#99

Post by ben_w »

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 chain of logic is falsified by the Whitney cotton gin: it was a labour saving device, which saved enough labour to make cotton much more profitable, which led to the growth of the cotton plantations in southern USA, which led to increased slavery, and those slavers actively prevented their slaves from learning to read.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-literacy_laws_in_the_Unit...

That said, I would also agree with the conclusion that "a growing percentage of people will have no jobs that they are capable of doing", but for different reasons.

I expect the abilities of AI to expand over time.

IQ is a poor measure, but suitable as a shorthand especially for a comment like this.

Imagine a general purpose AI that runs as fast as a human on 100 watt hardware; first one will be an idiot. Let's say IQ 50: only 0.1% of humans are dumber than this, nobody was employing them anyway. Version 2, say IQ 85: now about 16% are beaten by the AI, this absolutely matters, they're unemployable forever through no fault of their own, give them a basic income of some kind. Version 3, IQ 100, now half the world can't get work. Version 4, IQ 115, now it's 84% who can't get work, etc.

Reality is a lot messier than that, so nobody needs to bother picking holes in the specific details such as "that's a lot of electricity" or "AI isn't a robot" or "comparative advantage": this is a comment, not a research paper.

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

#100

Post by quaintdev »

robofanatic wrote: post #95
quaintdev wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a lot of unknowns in that and ROI can take very very long time. Not many people can or are willing to take that risk. If that one company is successful then you’ll see that space flooded with new companies.

Our generation is highly advanced but we have become very short sighted. We have made a mess of our world because of it.

I remember a story about Oxford. When it was built they planted entire forest of Oak trees so that in 500 years when Oxford will need repairing they have ample amount of wood available. In that age people were capable of thinking 500 years ahead. And we with all our advancement can't even think beyond ROI. Living on other planet should not be seen as choice but something that is necessary.

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