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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

#111

Post by trimethylpurine »

karaterobot wrote: post #66
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…

The fact that you can now warehouse with robots lowers the barrier of entry for warehousing, which creates new companies that will host competition against Amazon, offer contract labor for Amazon, and in both ways create jobs that are superior to the previously needed entry level pick and packer. The same laborer can now be promoted at a new company to a higher pay job that requires no greater skill set, simply because there are now more of those better jobs at more companies. We can't all be managers at Amazon. But we can all be managers at 100000 different warehouses that previously didn't exist. That's where they are supposed to go.

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

#112

Post by ameister14 »

Nimitz14 wrote: post #58
seper8 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How detached from reality are you that you think people can make ends meet while working 15 hours a week?

Some people do do that. Try stepping outside of your bubble.

The average hourly wage in the United States is $30, so 15 hours a week is $450 pre-tax. Live on that with a family.

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

#113

Post by simonsarris »

snowwrestler wrote: post #108
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 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. It’s not debatable; we have over 200 years of technological development to look back on and the trend is clear: the total number of jobs has increased at least as fast as human population growth over that time. In addition, the…

> It’s not debatable; we have over 200 years of technological development to look back on and the trend is clear: the total number of jobs has increased at least as fast as human population growth over that time.

200 years ago the town [severely mentally disabled person] could chop wood and carry water. What's he doing today?

There are ~9 million people on SSDI (disability) and ~5 million on SSI (considered completely unfit for work, the US version of basic income), and ~50 million retired. Retirement conceptually slowly became a thing around the late late 1800s. Many of these people are in one of these three categories because there is no job that would be a good fit for them, especially SSI, which most Americans don't even know about.

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

#114

Post by ben_w »

chillingeffect wrote: post #109
chucke1992 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither computers nor cars, nor office nor photoshop decreased the amount of available jobs...

But exactly as the person you replied to said, they increased the average intelligence needed to do the new jobs. That leaves so many marginal people unemployable. They could have maintained horses but working in cars is harder. I like this observation.

I'm not convinced that animal husbandry is less skilled than working in cars. Different skill, and as I've never done it I can't be certain, but horses are wet and messy biology with brains that are terrified of anything they've never seen before. Production line work I did do as a summer holiday job during my A-levels aged 17 or 18, it wasn't skilled work but also that was HVAC production line not cars.

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

#115

Post by bamboozled »

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…

But how do you know what that future looks like? For example, What if we use AGI and make ourselves smarter and more capable as Kurzweil has argued ?

You can’t imagine what that will look like so why worry about jobs ?

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

#116

Post by bamboozled »

ameister14 wrote: post #107
wolverine876 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>yes, a growing economy requires higher-skilled work, but that's good because that work comes with higher pay. The problem, of course, is that wages stagnated from '99 to 2014 and the job participation rate has been decreasing since 2000 while cost of living and general production increased; so no, in a dynamic market work does not necessarily come with higher pay. It actually wouldn't really make sense for all new w…

while cost of living and general production increased

This is a major problem! Why ? Corporations chasing profits without enough competition ?

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

#118

Post by rdedev »

snowwrestler wrote: post #108
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 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. It’s not debatable; we have over 200 years of technological development to look back on and the trend is clear: the total number of jobs has increased at least as fast as human population growth over that time. In addition, the…

The key point being it's created more jobs so far but we cannot extrapolate the same thing if AGI comes up tomorrow. Like let's say open ai comes up with a new LLM that is capable of replacing a human in let's say software development. What new jobs would it create?

All technological advancement so far has created new jobs because you need someone to actually work on it, like a chip factory or doing devops. As far as I can see an AI is general enough that you don't need much effort to specialize it and with how things are currently going, only a few players have the capability of building and deploying it.

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

#119

Post by bombcar »

layer8 wrote: post #87
genedan wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rideshare and delivery apps have enabled more people to do those jobs than before.

Because of less skills required? What are you basing this on?

More like because of the non-necessity of supplying a livable wage.

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

#120

Post by echelon »

snowwrestler wrote: post #108
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 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. It’s not debatable; we have over 200 years of technological development to look back on and the trend is clear: the total number of jobs has increased at least as fast as human population growth over that time. In addition, the…

> It’s not debatable; we have over 200 years of technological development to look back on and the trend is clear: the total number of jobs has increased at least as fast as human population growth over that time.

That isn't some immutable law of the universe. 200 years is a short sample size relative to geologic time.

Once we have robots doing the cooking, cleaning, heavy work, etc., what becomes of the Waffle House and Walmart worker? There will be a lower bound capability threshold, and automation will eventually exceed that.

I think a smart comparison would be to look at what job opportunities are available to the intellectually disadvantaged.

Then what happens when that lower bound inches higher?

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