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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

#271

Post by 082349872349872 »

actuallyalys wrote: post #149
Adverblessly wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are plenty of 15 hour jobs out there. You can get one right now! Not without a 90% pay cut (i.e. as opposed to the ~60% pay cut you'd expect for working 40% of the hours), I've checked.

Agreed. I think this is clearest when you look at benefits, e.g., the many American companies that only offer health insurance benefits to their full-time workers, but you see it in terms of pay, too. Most middle and high-paying jobs are exclusively full-time (and some expect 50, 60, or even more hours a week).

I live in a country where health insurance is individual, not employment based, so maybe that's part of why we offer 80% (most common) but also 60 and 40% positions?

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

#272

Post by wolverine876 »

0xedd wrote: post #90
wolverine876 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

But, some already operate at their peak. Then, you automate that and they can only shift to unemployment. The conversation shouldn't be about replacing the most skilled workers. The conversation should be about what happens to the average worker. That has an average IQ level. That can't learn something to compete with the automation. These people have families. These people will suffer.

> The conversation should be about what happens to the average worker. That has an average IQ level. That can't learn something to compete with the automation.

There are many tropes to unpack, including that IQ is somehow fixed and people's fate, and that even the "average" person "can't learn something". Also, it of course glorifies and cements the power of the wealthy who think they are smart and very special and deserving of everything.

Also, history has shown that people overwhelmingly that people can learn higher skilled jobs en masse. Just look at universal literacy - did anyone say, 'the average person can't learn to read'.

The US has long believed that anyone can achieve and succeed with hard work. That's been my experience, but that the limit is almost always in opportunity.

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

#273

Post by kelnos »

wordpad25 wrote: post #257
jmilkbal wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The power structures will never allow it. The conditions for a society of leisure have theoretically existed for some time now. We will simply end up with a a planetary ruling class that lives opulently while the other 99% live in abject poverty.

That's an impossible scenario in a democracy which is ruled by majority. Wealthy class have hugely outsized influence, sure, but it's not limitless. Consider, for example, that every politician lives and dies by his constituents employment metrics. If population is genuinely unhappy with arrangement they DO vote for change. If they are extremely unhappy - they vote for drastic change.

I think your view of our democratic institutions is a bit too rosy. I'm pessimistic that they'd withstand the social upheaval that might occur with a smart-enough AGI. Even now it seems like many people prefer authoritarian rulers -- or at least they think they'd prefer that, as long as the ruler is a part of their political tribe. They'll be in for a painful surprise later, of course.

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

#274

Post by wolverine876 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #265
wolverine876 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Not "or", "and". Without the automation they would have needed to hire another person.

That is not a given at all. Automation merely changes the ROI, which might result in more people being hired.

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

#275

Post by kelnos »

alvah wrote: post #222
mdekkers wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I need someone to move some furniture it might only need an IQ of 85 but that doesn’t mean AI is doing it any time soon. The article and discussion are literally about machines moving stuff.

> The article and discussion are literally about machines moving stuff. In a warehouse, not up the stairs to somebody's apartment...

Why not, though? Advancements in robotics happen all the time. If we end up with a decent AGI in 50 years, I expect the state of robotics to have advanced too, perhaps to the point where it could carry furniture up a stairway to an apartment.

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

#276

Post by jkhanlar »

dhosek wrote: post #61
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

https://youtu.be/FID0BLkZXuY?t=2058s

> 34:24 "Markets are efficient because of active managers setting the prices of securities, firms like Citadel, firms like Fidel.....lity (Fidelity) [...] trying to drive the value of companies towards where we think they should be valued." - Kenneth Cordelle Griffin, Citadel Securities, November 2023

I thought Amazon was a public company, not private, and since supply and demand is dead and real price discovery is gone, that unless it becomes a private company it likely will not survive, unless there are enough retail investors to DRS directly register shares in their name so that DTCC (Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation) and Cede & Co do not hold all the assets for retail in street name to then bankrupt and collect all the assets leaving retail investors holding worthless securities, but I don't see that Amazon is private? Maybe I missed something that happened and it's a private company now?

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

#277

Post by mFixman »

aimazon wrote: post #259
jedberg wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 1000 Indians story was completely incorrect though. They has 1000 people in India tagging the videos after the fact for improvements to the machine learning algorithms. They weren't watching in real time.

For what it’s worth, I purchased from one of these Amazon stores every day for over a year. After leaving the store, it would typically take 2+ hours before my purchases were registered in the Amazon app. I agree that there probably was a large degree of automation but based on how the store worked, there didn’t need to be an army of “real time” reviewers for humans to be involved in each individual purchase… it’s to…

Same here.

My theory is that purchase tracking is done automatically via AI, while humans are on the loop to check the feed of people taking each item and verifying that the amounts are correct before charging.

It makes sense. Even if your entire AI system is 99.9% accurate, you want a human to detect and remove that one-in-a-thousand mistake.

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

#278

Post by jkhanlar »

gnz11 wrote: post #91
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.

> they will have no need for an economy at all Who is going to buy all of their crap then?

I noticed NVIDIA skyrocket from billions to trillions market cap, so wouldn't NVIDIA be able to help deploy some a.i. simulatedly autonomous homo borg genesis to engage in scripted automated consumer lives to replace traditional homosapiens/humans consumers and takeover what otherwise was economy and market for human people but now they are replaced by redefining human and people to be displaced by the automated scripted a.i. controlled ones? This is already happening, right? Or did I just give them idea to make this a reality? lol, wait, why am I getting raided by the FBI right now? What's going on? HALP!

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

#279

Post by kelnos »

wvenable wrote: post #253
chucke1992 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As a software developer, I've personally eliminated many jobs. Software was eliminated entire classes of jobs. Almost all investment in technology by businesses is about cost reduction and the number one cost is labour. I think we're past the point where technology is making new jobs -- all that low hanging fruit has been gone for decades now. Growth now is all about optimization.

That's undeniably true, but not the point: obviously new technology eliminates entire classes of jobs (not much call for telephone switchboard operators these days), but ultimately if more jobs are created than are lost, we're fine.

I personally do wonder, though, if many of the new jobs that are created are worse jobs. For example, I have not yet taken any work in the "gig economy", but most of it seems pretty miserable, with shit wages.

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

#280

Post by mFixman »

ben_w wrote: post #99
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_th…

You are saying "IQ" and "intelligence" to explain people's career prospects, but what you actually mean is "social class".
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