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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

#311

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jkhanlar wrote: post #276
dhosek wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> thought Amazon was a public company, not private

Parks, libraries and military bases are publicly owned. Amazon is a private company whose shares are publicly traded.

> since supply and demand is dead

This is wrong.

> 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

This is nonsense. (For starters, not how bankruptcy works.)

> Maybe I missed something

Mankiw’s Principles of Economics is a well-regarded introductory text [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principles_of_Economics_(Man...

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

#312

Post by acureau »

DonsDiscountGas wrote: post #303
socketcluster wrote: post #248

The thing that's missed here is that it's not clear that robot purchase, maintenance cost and depreciation would be cheaper than paying 7.5 people a salary... Not to mention that the robots aren't going to be spending part of their salaries at Amazon as a worker might. Also, robots won't be eligible to vote in elections to support Amazon's political aspirations which give it access to billions of government contracts…

That belief about Henry Ford is a myth. It doesn't even pass the smell test, if a company is only selling to their own workers they can never make a profit (note that any company, even a large one like Ford or Amazon, is different from an entire economy). Ford raised wages and cut hours because his annual turnover was 300%. He ended up making more money through savings in hiring and training costs and workers staying…

I don't think it was implied that Ford's entire customer base was his own employees, just that he paid them enough to afford the cars the company manufactured. I agree with the rest of this though.

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

#313

Post by Ajedi32 »

jmilkbal wrote: post #216
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #193

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…

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.

> The conditions for a society of leisure have theoretically existed for some time now.

Not if everyone wants to maintain their current standard of living. Imagine working 50% less hours, but also having to live off 50% of your current total compensation. Some here could probably manage that, but most would probably prefer not to.

Now if you want a whole "society of leisure", you'd have to impose that same lifestyle choice across all of society by government fiat. Its easy to see why that hasn't happened.

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

#314

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #313
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.

> The conditions for a society of leisure have theoretically existed for some time now. Not if everyone wants to maintain their current standard of living. Imagine working 50% less hours, but also having to live off 50% of your current total compensation. Some here could probably manage that, but most would probably prefer not to. Now if you want a whole "society of leisure", you'd have to impose that same lifestyle…

Not really a realistic view of the western economy. Or economics.

Things like 'compensation' are fluid, fairly arbitrary and largely unrelated to the industrial complex. It's whatever we decide it is, pretty much.

Automation is in full swing, has been for twenty years and is only accelerating. Ignore that at your peril. Everybody will continue to have toasters, computers, cars even when we've automated most of us out of an industrial/manufacturing job.

How do I know? Because that already happened. Instead of tens of thousands of people on assembly lines, we have tens of engineers and managers overseeing automation. If it hasn't happened in some cherry-picked example, it will very soon.

We have to plan something for the majority of us to do, some way to participate in the resulting economy, without just throwing up our hands and saying "It's too hard!"

So much to say on this subject, that doesn't fit in an HN text field. There's a long history of thought on this subject, and the comments here indicate most folks are still on the first page in their thinking.

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

#315

Post by Ajedi32 »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #314
Ajedi32 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The conditions for a society of leisure have theoretically existed for some time now. Not if everyone wants to maintain their current standard of living. Imagine working 50% less hours, but also having to live off 50% of your current total compensation. Some here could probably manage that, but most would probably prefer not to. Now if you want a whole "society of leisure", you'd have to impose that same lifestyle…

Not really a realistic view of the western economy. Or economics. Things like 'compensation' are fluid, fairly arbitrary and largely unrelated to the industrial complex. It's whatever we decide it is, pretty much. Automation is in full swing, has been for twenty years and is only accelerating. Ignore that at your peril. Everybody will continue to have toasters, computers, cars even when we've automated most of us out…

Perhaps you could link to some information on this "long history of thought on this subject" because to me everything you just wrote sounds like nonsense.

The idea that we can just double people's compensation and thereby double our total economic output (because compensation is "whatever we decide it is") is so wrong headed I don't even know where to begin. Maybe that's a misunderstanding of your position, but I don't know how else to interpret what you just said.

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

#316

Post by btbuildem »

It's difficult to hold the paradox evident in most of the commentary here: both the desire to free people from the unhealthy repetitive tedium they are bound to participate in daily, and the overarching need for "jobs".

I'm much happier watching robots take over dangerous, mundane tasks, than seeing them edge into creative, intellectual, and decision-making work. Wasn't that the dream? That robots do all our work and we just chill, enjoy a life of leisure and fulfilling activity?

Looking back in history across all the -isms, the surplus created by those labouring has rarely gone to benefit them (unless we look as far back as hunter-gatherers). I don't know that advancing technology is the credible threat here; I think the misalignment is deeper than systemic even, as it persists across lifespans of civilisations.

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

#317

Post by sydbarrett74 »

btbuildem wrote: post #316

It's difficult to hold the paradox evident in most of the commentary here: both the desire to free people from the unhealthy repetitive tedium they are bound to participate in daily, and the overarching need for "jobs". I'm much happier watching robots take over dangerous, mundane tasks, than seeing them edge into creative, intellectual, and decision-making work. Wasn't that the dream? That robots do all our work and…

A life of leisure is the mirage-like carrot that the PTB dangle in front of our noses. Simultaneously, they intensify advertising to keep us on the hedonic treadmill, and thus trapped in a life of debt peonage.

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

#318

Post by 082349872349872 »

ben_w wrote: post #306
082349872349872 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a growing percentage of people will have no jobs that they are capable of doing a/ My bet is that some large fraction of people are currently doing jobs that are far less demanding ("robotic") than what they are capable of doing. b/ Also, in my experience IQ has a far bigger impact on length of training time than it does on the on-the-job performance afterwards.

> My bet is that some large fraction of people are currently doing jobs that are far less demanding ("robotic") than what they are capable of doing Agreed, hence the caveat of 100 watts when at human speed: Humans are not capable of competing against costs of 100W * $0.10/kWh = $0.01/hour even when the only expense that human has is the cheapest available calories.

Agreed. I also forgot:

c/ as far as I can tell, "jobs" have been steadily becoming less skilled over the centuries (because we expect people to switch more frequently between them?); can we accelerate that?

So might a way out be that people do regular 100 IQ people stuff (yoga instructors, community theatre, etc.) and automation does (almost) all the heavy lifting?

Bring on the Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy? If the Morlocks of the future are electronic, they won't want to eat us Eloi anyway? (burning a human for electricity is even more wasteful than giving it spin classes)

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

#319

Post by oblio »

trimethylpurine wrote: post #284
oblio wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The fact that warehouses are huge and need a lot of supporting infrastructure?

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

#320

Post by RaftPeople »

btbuildem wrote: post #316

It's difficult to hold the paradox evident in most of the commentary here: both the desire to free people from the unhealthy repetitive tedium they are bound to participate in daily, and the overarching need for "jobs". I'm much happier watching robots take over dangerous, mundane tasks, than seeing them edge into creative, intellectual, and decision-making work. Wasn't that the dream? That robots do all our work and…

> I don't know that advancing technology is the credible threat here

The thing most people don't realize is that the robots in question aren't really even taking jobs that existed prior to the ecommerce model, and the work the robots are doing used to be handled by the consumer.

Details:

1-The robots are taking over the job of moving goods from the storage shelf to the packer.

2-This is pure "walking" time when humans do it, 10 miles per day in a typical DC, not value add.

3-Before ecommerce, with brick and mortar, the goods were picked in bulk and shipped to stores and placed on the racks, and the consumer was the person that walked to get the item and bring it to the packer (cashier). Some of the walking was done in the DC, but not nearly to the same extent.

4-There are multiple different ways to solve this problem of humans walking all over the DC to pick one+two piece orders in a way that is efficient. "Robots" in the form of moving shelves (Amazon), or conveyors+sorters with bulk pick then sort by order, or etc.

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