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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

#281

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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…

I think it was from a video I watched a day or two ago, describing how with those uber and lyft and other order delivery services that consumers apparently are placing those orders wtih the services, picking up the items themselves and walking out, and then when the actual delivery person arrives, order is gone, reported as missing, the consumer also reports similarly, even though they picked up the orders themselves, that this is apparently happening more widespread commonly that still is vulnerable with business infrastructures to not prevent the exploit from taking place, I am curious how this may affect industry standards with regards to this concept because I never witnessed it but I wouldn't be surprised if it is not even that widely realized about the issue yet thereby enabling more theft and loss and damages and whatnot.

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

#282
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.

I don't think that's necessarily true.

A taxi driver of 20 years ago had to memorize roads and routes, and become familiar with traffic patterns at different times of the day. (Many taxi drivers sucked for various reasons, but that's neither here nor there.) Today, anyone can be an adequate taxi driver, without really any knowledge of the areas they work in. Slap a smartphone on your dashboard and you're good to go. That's a lower skill job.

> You wouldn't displace 100 manual labor workers with a machine that requires 105 workers to maintain

Sure, and that's part of the problem. You lay off those 100 manual workers and hire 5 workers to maintain the machinery. It's not at all clear that those 100 manual workers are going to then find higher-skill jobs, especially if they need training to get them.

> What's the proper social response to [hypothetical AGI displacing more and more jobs], I don't know.

Easy: universal basic income, plus free higher education and vocational training programs for people who do want to work in a field that still needs humans in the loop. We need to drop this inhumane view that people who can't (or even simply don't want to) work somehow don't at least deserve a basic standard of living. And I think we'll find that if we remove financial, housing, and food insecurity, more people will actually want to find meaningful ways to participate in society. Some people won't, and maybe that's a shame, but for the sake of all of us, they should still be housed and fed, comfortably enough.

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

#283
post #160

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That seems wrong. Why would robot warehouses lead to more and better warehouse jobs for humans? Fewer humans would be necessary overall in the existing warehouses, and it's not obvious to me why a lot more warehouses would be created. Did replacing manufacturing jobs with robot assemblers in—for example—the automotive sector, lead to more auto manufacturers and better jobs for auto workers? I don't believe it did. Th…

Let me help you with that one. Fewer jobs & lower pay > fewer orders > fewer warehouses.

Because warehouse workers are the primary customers? I think you're trying to be funny.

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

#284
post #137

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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 becau…

That's assuming the warehousing robots are commodities, which they aren't and maybe they'll be in a few decades. It also assumes the moat to warehousing isn't huge, which seems kind of silly for such huge capital investments.

The moat is definitely smaller when labor, your biggest cost, is smaller. You can finance a purchase that's much larger if you are able to make the monthly payment because you don't have high labor costs. Purchasing has an ROI, and labor doesn't.

What am I missing?

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

#285

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Does NASA have any planetary colonization program? They do plan the Artemis mission, but AFAIK that is about establishing a tiny scientific base on the Moon, probably with regular exchange of the crew. I don't think they proclaimed an ambition to settle massive amounts of people there. For me "living on another planet" is only really SpaceX's goal. Build a semi-independent nation on Mars, with a million or more peopl…

Proclaiming things is very easy.

SpaceX aren't just proclaiming things. They are building a skyscraper-sized fully reusable rocket with completely new engines to get away from the Earth cheaply.

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

#286

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The jobs robots replace aren’t good for the human soul

Being homeless and unemployed isn't good for the human soul either.

We have record employment currently. There are other jobs.

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

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's from inflation. Look at CVS revenue growth and that's with a declining customer volume. Fewer customers buying fewer items, but fairly massive revenue growth.

Because of massive price increases due to a monopoly.

Can you share more on this? What monopoly?

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

#288
post #273

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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.

And that’s not even factoring in the automation of highly targeted yet dynamic political content (not just ads but the consumed content itself) in order to charge/persuade the target to vote for the paying party

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

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assumption here is that an AI with IQ 100 could do anything a human with an IQ of 100 could do, only cheaper. But that's just averages. Really it would do half the things better and half worse, and then people have jobs doing the things that it does worse. That would continue until it doesn't do anything worse, which may or may not ever happen, but if it did and we're all still alive then the result would be post…

On the one hand I like to have faith in humanity. OTOH... Anytime someone in power has no need for someone - what have they done? Provided for them for the rest of their life? Or discarded them? The results generally lie with emotional attachment or sentiment. Take care of your aging parents as they become productively useless - sure. Take care of the abstract thousands of people who made [thing] but are out of work…

The point is that they don't end up out of work.

We have more automation right now than at pretty much any other point in history, and the unemployment rate is not high.

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